Every design for Rosny-Sous-Bois

Rosny-sous-Bois is known to anyone who drives east out of Paris for the Rosny interchange, where the A86 and A3 motorways meet, and the town long housed the national road-information centre. Away from the motorways it is a lively, everyday place: a town centre with its shops, its town hall and its swimming pool, the residential slopes of the Plateau d'Avron, and stations on the RER E and Métro Line 11 bringing people home each evening.

It lies in the eastern suburbs, around ten kilometres from the centre of Paris, in a valley flanked by two plateaus, with Montreuil, Bondy, Noisy-le-Sec and Villemomble as neighbours. A small stream, the ru du Moleret, rises here before disappearing into culverts, and the old Dhuis aqueduct crosses the town. The name says the rest: Rosny goes back to the Latin Rodoniacum, and Sous-Bois means 'under the woods'.

Rosny-Rail, the museum that carries the town's name, is the landmark to put on the map: a fitting one for a place whose daily life runs on its lines and junctions.