Every design for Créteil

At the foot of the Mont-Mesly, the only rise in an otherwise flat alluvial plain, Créteil shows off two very different pasts at once. There is the prehistoric one, proudly embodied by the Polissoir Néolithique, a Neolithic polishing stone weighing two tons that the town treats as its oldest treasure. And there is the modern one: the Mont-Mesly estate by Charles-Gustave Stoskopf, then the new prefecture of Val-de-Marne, with its hospital, town hall and courts.

People from Créteil tend to remember the water first. The Marne loops along the eastern edge of the commune before meeting the Seine, its banks laid out for long walks, and the town's lake, a former sand pit, fills the south-west with light. Days out at the Île de Loisirs de Créteil, family gardens and green spaces everywhere have won the town a national landscape prize.

And then there are Les Choux de Créteil, the cabbages, a name that makes every visitor look twice and every local smile, their outline rising above the trees of the lakeside.