Every design for Garges-Lès-Gonesse

In the Bois des Lochères, the whine of a business jet coming in to land at Le Bourget is simply part of the background. Garges-lès-Gonesse lives alongside the airport: one of its boundaries runs exactly along the airfield, and the planes cross the town only a few dozen metres up.

One explanation of its name points to the Old Germanic wardja, a place of guard, after a Frankish fort. For centuries it was a farming village; then, early in the twentieth century, it became a suburb, and in the post-war decades, together with neighbouring Sarcelles, it saw some of the very first large housing estates in France rise from its fields. Today it is a busy, built-up town on the RER D, with the Fort de Stains close by. The memorial Hommage au Groupe Manouchian keeps an older story in view.

Wherever life takes the people of Garges, the sound of a low plane and the sight of the tower blocks against the sky mean one thing: home.