Most of these 20 daytrips from Paris include an optional country or riverside walk, often to a different station, and at least one other attraction, such as a concert, boat trip, restaurant, market or offbeat museum.
This is an attempt to classify them by what might be your main reason for going: riverside restaurants, châteaux, châteaux-museums, writers’ and artists’ houses and historic towns and buildings.
Riverside restaurants
Conflans Sainte Honorine
Traditional restaurant on an island accessed by speedboat
Villeneuve Triage
Guinguette (riverside restaurant with accordion music and dancing)
Ile du Martin-Pêcheur
Popular island guinguette accessed by footbridge
Créteil
Restaurant on one of several small islands linked by footbridges
Poissy
Long-established riverside restaurant, favoured by the Impressionists and their writer friends
Châteaux
Champs sur Marne
Madame de Pompadour’s elegant château and park,
close to the former Menier chocolate factory on the River Marne
Rambouillet
14C château, a former royal and presidential residence, loathed by Marie Antoinette, cherished by Napoleon, set in a large landscaped park à l’anglaise
Châteaux-Museums
Chantilly
Grand Renaissance-style château, housing the Condé Museum in a park designed by Le Nôtre, surrounded by forest. The collections include medieval and Renaissance paintings
Ecouen
Renaissance château housing the National Museum of the Renaissance
in a forest setting
Sceaux
19C château replacing the 17C original built for Colbert, housing the Museum of the Ile de France in one of Le Nôtre’s most attractive parks
St Germain-en-Laye
Renaissance château, a former royal residence with grounds designed by Le Nôtre, housing the National Archaelogical Museum
Writers’ and artists’ houses
St Germain-en-Laye
The painter Maurice Denis’s house and garden, originally a 17C hospital endowed by Mme de Montespan, housing a collection of paintings by Denis and his Symbolist contemporaries
and the Maison Claude Débussy, now the tourist office
Montfort l’Amaury
Maurice Ravel’s little house, now a museum,
and the nearby park of the Château de Groussay with its follies, a favourite of Cecil Beaton
Montmorency
Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s modest house and the garden containing his isolated study, now a museum
Sceaux
Chateaubriand’s house at Châtenay-Malabry, now a museum, with a tea-room in the park
Poissy
Emile Zola’s house-museum near the Seine at Médan, containing the original draft of his famous article ‘J’accuse’.
Historic towns/buildings
La Ferté-Milon
Dominated by the magnificent ruined castle built for the Duke of Orléans around 1400, the birthplace of Jean Racine in 1639,
with a boat stop on the Canal de l’Ourcq which flows through the town centre
Crécy la Chapelle
A medieval town enclosed by three moats, with diminutive defensive towers and drawbridges
and the 13C church at La Chapelle
Royaumont
13C Cistercian Abbey founded by St Louis, now a venue for concerts
Provins
The capital of the Counts of Champagne in the 11C, with massive ramparts encircling the upper town, unique in Northern France
Luzarches
A small market town with an impressive medieval gateway and church
Senlis
A former Roman town with an arena, birthplace of the Capetian monarchy in the 10C, dominated by Its 12C Cathedral
Moret sur Loing
An important border town in the 11C, on the River Loing enclosed by two medieval gateways, home of the Impressionist painter Alfred Sisley
Poissy
Birthplace of St Louis in 1214, riverside haunt of the Impressionists and site of the pioneering Villa Savoye built by Le Corbusier in 1929, now a museum
Conflans Sainte Honorine
Perched above the Seine and the Oise, a major river port which still feels like a medieval village, with an 11C defensive tower and narrow streets descending via steps to the Seine
‘An Hour From Paris’ Etching and lithograph in five colours, by Virginia Powell, inspired by using the book. Edition of 12.
Copyright Virginia Powell, www.virginiapowell.com
