Saint-Germain-en-Laye – Sights and trips – Tours et détours – "Le livre"

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The page presents fundamentals regarding Saint-Germain-en-Laye

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SubjectIntroduction to Saint-Germain-en-Laye
LinkNo
OriginTraduction of a text written by Benoît Battistelli
Municipal elected official in charge of culture
Revision date20/05/2023

Three universes make up the territory of Saint-Germain-en-Laye:

  • The natural or wild forest with the National Forest, the largest forest closest to Paris, directly accessible by the RER, which, over the centuries, has welcomed hermits, religious communities, royal hunts, pilgrimages, popular festivals that continue through the Fête des Loges, and today hundreds of thousands of walkers, joggers, cyclists. A veritable green lung of the capital.
  • Nature modeled and magnified by man with the park of the Château designed by André Le Nôtre with its French gardens, its ponds and its 1,25 miles long “Grande Terrasse” which offers an exceptional view of the Seine valley, the Paris basin, La Défense and Paris. But also the many public green spaces and especially the private gardens that punctuate and air the City.
  • The urban fabric shaped over the centuries with its public monuments, its mansions, its stalls, its residential districts, its collective housing, its alleys, its squares, its avenues. Even before the concepts of green towns and eco-districts were developed, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, like Monsieur Jourdain and his prose, was being built in accordance with these principles: a town with controlled urban density, a town -nature, nature in the city. You have to add water to it. Saint-Germain-en-Laye is not only a green lung, but also a water tower, source of streams and streams that feed the Seine. The most important of them, the “ru de Buzot”, benefits from a regeneration program allowing the creation of a blue flow. But above all there is the “Grand Bassin”, just above the RER station, in the perspective of the Loges. The largest round basin in Île-de-France, it completes the work of Le Nôtre at the junction of the Forest, the Park and the City. The city in nature, nature in the green and blue city.

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