Every design for Montreuil

At the marché aux puces on the Paris edge of Bas-Montreuil, the town's day begins among stalls and old workshops, a short walk from street-art murals such as the tribute to Frantz Fanon on boulevard Théophile Sueur. Up at the town hall hangs Au temps d'harmonie, a pointillist painting by Paul Signac, and the Croix de Chavaux is busy with shoppers heading for the malls.

Montreuil lies in the eastern suburbs, just beyond the Paris city limit and north of the Bois de Vincennes, on a plateau that climbs as you move away from the capital. The slope divides the town into Bas-Montreuil and Haut-Montreuil, and from the higher ground the little monastery that gave the place its name once looked out over Vincennes; today the Château de Vincennes and the Sainte-Chapelle de Vincennes are close neighbours to the south. Parks such as the Parc des Beaumonts and Parc Montreau open up the streets, while the Lumière brothers and Georges Méliès once worked in the lower town, and the Peach Walls fed the royal court.

If you have climbed that hill from the flea market to the parks more times than you can count, this one is for you.