Suresnes — From vineyards to factories to the garden city, in three generations

Origins and history

The first historical mention of Suresnes dates from 884, when the Frankish king Carloman II gave the abbey of la Croix-Saint-Leufroy, in Normandy, a domain that included «Surisna». Viking raids drove the monks of the abbey to take refuge in the Paris region, where their community merged with that of Saint-Germain-des-Prés; Charles the Simple then took back Carloman's donation and transmitted the domain to the abbey in 918, and that religious house kept control of the territory until the Revolution. In 1070 Suresnes became a parish, whose church of Saint-Leufroy originated in a chapel of the early tenth century.