Every design for Stains

Stains sits on the Plaine de France between Saint-Denis, La Courneuve, Dugny, Sarcelles and Garges-lès-Gonesse, a town of the northern suburbs whose name comes from the Latin stagna, the ponds and standing waters that once lay across this flat land.

It lies around a dozen kilometres from the centre of Paris and not far from Charles de Gaulle Airport, with a main road running north to south through it and the motorway close by. Stains-Village is the historic centre; around it spread the Clos Saint-Lazare, the Moulin-Neuf, Allende and the garden city, the Cité-jardin de Stains, one of the places that give the town its character. The Hôtel de Ville is the old stable block of the Château de Stains, while the Château de la Motte survives only as a few outbuildings. The vast Parc départemental Georges-Valbon gives everyone room to breathe, and the Parc Nelson Mandela does the same closer to home.

Put Stains on a shirt and you carry that great park with you: the open lawns and the long walks that people here have shared for generations.