“Abandoned places” chante Freddy Mercury dans The Show Must Go on. And abandoned placesthere are several Paris and in Parisian region. Today, we take you to one of them: a village that has almost become ghost…
A village that has become a noise zone
At the height of its attractiveness, around 1,000 people lived there. Old Country of Goussainville in Val-d’Oise. This is its position in relation to the airport Roissy-Charles de Gaulle, just 5 km from the end of the slopes, which has caused its population to drop by more than 2/3. Today, almost 300 people continue to live there despite the plane noise taking off every five to ten minutes and the rest of the village falling in ruin.
A destruction that cannot take place
To tell the truth, this village should not have fallen into ruin: it should have been shaved. Indeed, the decree of February 13, 1973 specified that the group Paris Airport had to find a solution for local residents suffering from nuisances due to their places of residence located not far from the aerodromes. Most of the time this meant buy back homes and raze them so that only a plain of vegetation remains.
But the history of Old Country of Goussainville does not stop there, because another law comes into play: the law of February 25, 1943, providing that any building, within a perimeter of 500 meters around a Monument, cannot be freely constructed, modified, or destroyed. Which is the case ofvillage churchSaint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul, classified as a Historic Monument in 1913. Finding themselves in a dead end, the group Paris Airport preferred to wall up the homes and let nature take control of this village.
Also read : Do you know this French building, unique in the world, resulting from the work of a single man and classified as a historic monument?
A burst of life?
Although one might imagine the opposite, the Old Country of Goussainville is not really a ghost town. There remain in fact a few residents anxious to keep their roof and their village. Thus, they continue to keep their small assets alive on a day-to-day basis, particularly with a primary school which continues to receive children, but also with the opening of a bookstore: Goussainbook. Also, the park of the Old Castle is still accessible, even if the building itself has fallen into disrepair since its last residents left in the 1980s.
Above all, since the last municipal elections in 2020 and the election ofAbdelaziz Hamida (SE – without label), things seem to be changing for this almost abandoned village. 2023 thus saw the second edition of the “Fête du Vieux Pays” to celebrate Goussainville in its entirety. Also, after a citizen consultationit seems that the rehabilitation of the place is accelerating: a third place with the accents of a cultural village would soon see the light of day. Enough to bring a little life back to this sleeping village…
Also read : Do you know this enchanting village created to bring the fairy tales of your childhood to life? A magical place to absolutely discover!
Featured Photo : A ruined building in the Old Country of Goussainville © Sylvia Fredriksson / Flickr
