Every design for Sevran

Sevran is known for a forest park that used to be a gunpowder works, for the Canal de l'Ourcq and for the rappers who put its name on the map, Kaaris and Maes among them. It is also home to the Espace François Mauriac, a music and dance school where well-known composers have taught.

The town lies in the north-eastern suburbs of Paris, in the heavily built-up southern part of the Plaine de France, with Villepinte, Vaujours, Livry-Gargan and Aulnay-sous-Bois all around it. The small Morée river rises in a marsh in Sevran itself before disappearing underground, and the Canal de l'Ourcq, dug to bring drinking water to Paris, cuts across the commune. For centuries the subsoil was quarried for limestone and gypsum; in the sixties and seventies the old village became a fast-growing suburb.

The heart of it all is the forest park of the national powder works of Sevran-Livry, with the Musée technique des Poudres de l'Armement René Amiable telling its story. Picture its paths under the trees in autumn: a forest that grew where gunpowder was once made.