Every design for Mantes-La-Jolie

The pretty name comes first in Mantes-la-Jolie, and the story behind it: Henry IV is said to have written to Gabrielle d'Estrées, who lived here, "I am on my way to Mantes, my pretty". The town took that name officially only in 1953, after centuries as Mantes on the Seine.

The Vieux Pont de Limay is the image most people carry of it, the old bridge that Corot painted alongside the town's great church, and a picture that hangs in the Louvre. Mantes sat halfway between Paris and the dukes of Normandy at Rouen, which made it a border stronghold; the Tour Saint-Martin and the Musée de l'Hôtel Dieu still speak of that past. Louis XIV made it a centre for brass and woodwind instruments, and in 1944 it saw the first Allied crossing of the Seine.

For those who grew up between the riverbanks, the lakes and the Île l'Aumône, this map holds every shortcut home.