Every design for Drancy

Drancy lies on the flat plain north-east of Paris, between Le Bourget, Bobigny and La Courneuve, on ground the Marne and the Seine once crossed in glacial times and which stayed marshy until industry and housing arrived. Its name goes back to Terentiacum, the estate of a Gallo-Roman landowner, and in the seventeenth century it was still two villages, Drancy le Grand and le Petit Drancy.

The feeling the town carries most heavily comes from the Second World War, when the Drancy internment camp held Jews, Gypsies and others before they were deported to the Nazi camps, most of the convoys bound for Auschwitz. The Mémorial de la Shoah de Drancy, created by the sculptor Shlomo Selinger in 1976, keeps that memory in the middle of everyday life.

The Parc de Ladoucette, the only park in Drancy, shows a gentler side, with its pond, a small educational farm and the Château de Ladoucette, built in 1533. Wearing Drancy means wearing all of it: the remembrance, and the quiet green corner residents call their own.