The Île de France: past and present

Place-names in bold are described in the text

A foreigner’s first impressions

When I first came to live in Paris I was puzzled by the phrase ‘Île de France’ (the ‘island of France’). I gradually realised that it referred to the area around Paris for a radius of about 80 kilometres (I was vague about this) and that les Franciliens, ‘the islanders of France’, meant the inhabitants of this region. Rather like Greater London, except that no one talks about Greater Londoners. I did not realise that the Île de France is almost eight times the size of Greater London, with a much better train service. Beyond noticing that it seemed to contain a lot of famous places, which I felt slightly guilty about not wanting to visit (Versailles, Fontainebleau, Barbizon), I had no clear idea of it as a region, nor did I feel the need for one. When I thought of the French countryside, I thought of the South of France, the Auvergne, the Loire, Burgundy, Brittany and, at a pinch, Normandy, which really seemed too close to England to count.

I also began to think of the area around Paris as the banlieue (a much more negative word than ‘suburb’) with an authentically Parisian shudder of fear, pity or contempt. My Paris, real Paris, did not extend beyond zone one of the Carte Orange, now replaced by the Passe Navigo, the métro and bus pass covering up to five zones around Paris. The limits of Zone One are still those of the old city boundary, traceable by the circle of métro stations beginning with the word Porte, indicating the entrance gates that were once part of the walls surrounding the city. I had assumed that these gates had disappeared

Opposite: The remains of a 13th-century church in the toilettes of the Brasserie Saint Furcy, Lagny-sur-Marne