Every design for Bondy

Bondy is known far beyond the Paris suburbs as a town that produced Kylian Mbappé, and a mural in his honour, the Fresque Kylian Mbappé, now looks out over its streets. The list of athletes from here is long: footballers above all, but also judokas, sprinters, fencers and basketball players.

Yet the town's oldest memory is green. In the Middle Ages this was mostly forest, the forest of Bondy, a notorious haunt of bandits and robbers that travellers feared to cross. The woods have long since retreated, but something of them survives in the Bois de Bondy in the north of the town, in the Parc départemental de la Bergère, and in the Parc de la Mare à la Veuve Honorine de Beauvais to the south. Through the middle runs the Canal de l'Ourcq, a straight band of water crossing the town from east to west.

Bondy lies north-east of Paris, densely built and full of life, served by the RER E and the T4 tram. For anyone who first kicked a ball on its pitches, that mural is reason enough to carry this map.