Dubuffet’s giant work, the hidden hunting lodge and the military fort

Every week, Culture Bus lets you discover unsuspected places a few meters from your bus stop. Gardens, monuments, alternative culture, what if your bus line took you somewhere other than work today?

This week, an adventure in Val-de-Marne awaits regulars on line 23, between the Créteil prefecture and the Brie-Comte-Robert stadium.

First stop in Villecresnes at the “Gros Chêne”, to see not a tree but a castle which lives to the rhythm of the clicking of hooves. In the heart of the Grosbois estate, you can hear the athletic stride of the horses training less than 15 km from the Paris-Vincennes racecourse.

This typical 17th century hunted residence houses the trotting museum. Since 2010, he has retraced the history of this discipline which is observed on the tracks where the horses pull a sulky and its jockey. From ancient Rome to the present day, discover the evolution of dressage methods or the architecture of racecourses.

Next stop on line 23, La Plaine in the town of Périgny, between art and nature. In the middle of a park is the Closerie Falbala, a strange white and black undulating flowerbed which became a historic monument in 1990. A considerable work by Jean Dubuffet, artist and theoretician of outsider art, in which you can wander.

The abstract walls open up and offer you several meditative rooms in which to lose yourself over the 1610m² of colorful polyurethane.

It’s just before the terminus that our line 23 ride ends, at the Place de Fêtes de Brie-Comte-Robert stop, in a medieval atmosphere.

The town is in fact home to a 12th century castle, built at the instigation of Robert I, brother of King Louis VII, for military purposes.

Its deep towers and its eight towers, it constituted a stronghold of the region for many centuries but did not escape the pillaging and destruction of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Find all the discoveries that await you on the Ile-de-France lines, in replay on france.tv/idf