Pays d’Aulnoye

“Alders,” I muse aloud, letting the word hang in the air above us here at the Pays d’Aulnoye. “Can you almost smell the damp earth, the dense thickets crowding the banks of a meandering river?” The Pays d’Aulnoye, once a verdant expanse of alder trees, whispers its forgotten name through the rustling leaves of its few remaining green spaces. This micro-region, nestled in the Île-de-France region northeast of Paris, tells a compelling story of transformation. The Pays d’Aulnoye is a plateau in the southeastern part of the Pays de France. Its boundaries, once marked by the natural spread of alders, now blur into the urban sprawl of Paris’s northeastern suburbs. Imagine this area as it appeared on the 1818-1824 Staff Map of the Paris Area – the Plateau de l’Aunoy, clearly defined, bordered by the Plateau de Roissy to the north and the Multien and Goële to the northeast. To the east lay the Brie Champenoise, and to the south, the Plateau d’Avron and the Marne River. This Pays d’Aulnoye once hosted a part of the vast Forest of Bondy, stretching from the town of Bondy to Coubron. Echoes of this ancient woodland linger in place names like Les Pavillons-sous-Bois and Clichy-sous-Bois, formerly Clichy-en-l’Aunoy – “Clichy in the alders”. The Pays d’Aulnoye isn’t confined to a single town. It encompasses a sweep of communes, from Le Blanc-Mesnil and Drancy in the west, through Bobigny and Bondy, to Aulnay-sous-Bois, formerly Aunay, and Vaujours further east. Even Livry-Gargan, Clichy-sous-Bois, Coubron, Montfermeil, and Chelles fall within its historical embrace. Major communication routes, like the N3 highway and the Paris-Strasbourg railway line, now crisscross the Pays d’Aulnoye, following an east-west trajectory. These modern arteries overlay the ancient paths that once wound through the alder groves, connecting the scattered communities of this micro-region. While much of the Pays d’Aulnoye’s natural heritage has given way to urbanization, the whispers of its past still resonate in its name, in its topography, and in the lingering green spaces that stubbornly resist the concrete tide.