Current Time in Marne La Vallée, France

Marne-la-Vallée is not a traditional town but a planned new city stretching for some twenty kilometres east of Paris along the valley of the River Marne. Created in 1972 as one of the new towns designed to absorb the growth of the capital region, it spreads across three departments and gathers more than two dozen communes into four successive sectors, from Porte de Paris nearest the city to Val d'Europe at the far eastern end.

Around three hundred thousand people live in this corridor of housing estates, business parks, woodland and artificial lakes. Its global importance comes from a single decision taken in the 1980s: the eastern sector was chosen as the site of Disneyland Paris, which opened in 1992 and has since become the most visited tourist destination in Europe, drawing many millions of guests a year and reshaping the economy of the whole area.

The valley itself has a long history of villages, mills and châteaux, and the wooded slopes were once hunting country for the French court. Modern Marne-la-Vallée, however, is a deliberate creation of the post-war state, planned to relieve overcrowding in Paris and to distribute jobs and housing along a new eastern axis. Construction proceeded sector by sector for decades, each with its own architectural character, and the arrival of the theme park and a high-speed rail station completed the transformation.

Besides the two Disney parks and the Disney Village, the area has landmarks of a very different kind. Les Espaces d'Abraxas at Noisy-le-Grand, a monumental postmodern housing complex designed by Ricardo Bofill, looks like a classical ruin reimagined in concrete and has served as a film set many times. Val d'Europe offers a large shopping centre, an aquarium and the outlet village of La Vallée, while the Bois de Grâce, the lakes of Val Maubuée and the riverside paths give the district green space. The medieval town of Meaux and the château of Champs-sur-Marne lie close by.

Everyday life here is suburban and international. Restaurants, cinemas and concert venues serve residents and visitors, and the population is notably young and mixed, drawn from across France, Europe and Africa by work in tourism, logistics and technology.

Transport is the backbone of the whole project. Line A of the RER crosses the new town from end to end, carrying passengers to central Paris in around forty minutes, while Marne-la-Vallée–Chessy station receives high-speed TGV trains from Lille, Lyon, Bordeaux and Brussels without any need to change in Paris. Motorways and an extensive bus network complete the picture.

Education is a genuine strength. The Cité Descartes campus at Champs-sur-Marne is one of the largest engineering and urban research clusters in France, home to Université Gustave Eiffel, École des Ponts ParisTech and ESIEE Paris.

Marne-la-Vallée is a modern experiment in city building, and its blend of world-famous entertainment, bold architecture and serious research makes it far more than a suburb.