Every design for Cergy

When Cergy was chosen to anchor the Cergy-Pontoise new town in the 1960s, it was only a village on the Oise. Today it is the central and most populous commune of that new town and holds the Val-d'Oise prefecture building, even though neighbouring Pontoise is officially the department's capital. The old village and the hamlets of Ménandon, Gency and Ham are still there, folded into a town that grew fast.

Everyday life has an easy, practical rhythm: three stations on RER A, buses straight to Charles de Gaulle Airport, and weekends near the water. Port Cergy, the marina on the Oise, mixes homes, moored boats, restaurants and a boating school, while the Base de Loisirs de Cergy-Neuville near Ham draws people outdoors. There is a sense of a place still young enough to be shaped by the people who live in it.

The Axe Majeur, with the Tour Belvédère and Les Douze Colonnes, is the image most people carry away, and the reason a map of Cergy feels worth wearing.