Yvelines

Yvelines
Yvelines
	— Department —
	Prefecture building of the Yvelines department, in Versailles
	; Coat of arms
	; Coat of arms
	Location of Yvelines in France
	Coordinates: 48°50′N 1°55′E / 48.833, 1.917Coordinates: 48°50′N 1°55′E / 48.833, 1.917
Country	France
Region	Île-de-France
Prefecture	Versailles
Subprefectures	Mantes-la-Jolie; Rambouillet; Saint-Germain-; en-Laye
	Government
• President of the General Council	Pierre Bédier
	Area
• Total	2,284 km2 (882 sq mi)
	Population (2011)
• Total	1,413,635
• Rank	9th
• Density	620/km2 (1,600/sq mi)
Time zone	CET (UTC+1)
• Summer (DST)	CEST (UTC+2)
Department number	78
Arrondissements	4
Cantons	39
Communes	262
	^1 French Land Register data, which exclude estuaries, and lakes, ponds, and glaciers larger than 1 km2

Yvelines (French pronunciation: [ivlin]) is a French department in the region of Île-de-France.

History[]

Yvelines was created from the western part of the former department of Seine-et-Oise on 1 January 1968 in accordance with a law passed on 10 January 1964 and a décret d'application (a decree specifying how a law should be enforced) from 26 February 1965. It inherited Seine-et-Oise's official number of 78.

It gained the communes of Châteaufort and Toussus-le-Noble from the adjacent department of Essonne in 1969.

The departmental capital, Versailles, which grew up around Louis XIV's château, was also the French capital for more than a century under the Ancien Régime and again between 1871 and 1879 during the early years of the Third Republic. Since then the château has continued to welcome the parlement when called upon to sit in a congressional sitting, jointly with the upper house in order to enact constitutional changes or, as happened most recently in June 2009, to listen to a formal declaration by the president.^[1]

Geography[]

Yvelines is bordered by the departments of Val-d'Oise on the north, Hauts-de-Seine on the east, Essonne on the southeast, Eure-et-Loir on the southwest, and Eure on the west.

The eastern part of the department, as well as its northern part along the Seine, is part of the Paris metropolitan area, but the rest of the department is rural, much of it covered by the Forest of Rambouillet (also known as the Forest of Yveline, from which the name of the department is derived).

Besides Versailles (the prefecture) and the subprefectures of Mantes-la-Jolie, Rambouillet, and Saint-Germain-en-Laye, important cities include Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, Poissy, Les Mureaux, Houilles, Plaisir, Sartrouville, Chatou, Le Chesnay, and the new agglomeration community of Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines.

Two regional parks can be found in Yvelines: the parc of the Haute Vallée de Chevreuse and part of the parc of Vexin Français.

Yvelines is home to one of France's best known golf courses, La Tuilerie-Bignon, in the village of Saint-Nom-la-Bretèche.

Demographics[]

In French, a man from the Yvelines is called Yvelinois (plural Yvelinois); a woman is Yvelinoise (plural Yvelinoises).

Place of birth of residents[]

Template:France immigration

Tourism[]

Palaces and Châteaux[]

Palace of Versailles
Château of Breteuil
Château of Buc
Château of Dampierre
Château of Maisons-Lafitte
Château of Rambouillet
Château of Saint-Germain-en-Laye
Château of Thoiry
Château of Vaux-sur-Seine
Château of Mauvières
Château du Pont
Château Villette

Museums[]

Museum of National Antiques (Saint-Germain-en-Laye)
Museum of River and Canal Craft (Conflans-Sainte-Honorine)
Horse-drawn Coach Museum (Versailles)
Toy Museum (Poissy)
Sheep Museum (Rambouillet)
Cloth Museum of Jouy (Jouy-en-Josas)
National Barn Museum of Port-Royal (Magny-les-Hameaux)
International Museum of Naive Art
Musee Lambinet (Versailles)

Artist's and Writer's Houses[]

André Derain's house (Chambourcy)
Elsa Triolet-Aragon's house (Saint-Arnoult-en-Yvelines)
Émile Zola's house (Médan)
Maurice Ravel's house/museum (Montfort-l'Amaury)
Ivan Turgenev House (Bougival)
Alexandre Dumas, père's Château de Monte-Cristo (Port-Marly)
Jean-Claude Richard's family estate (Saint-Nom-la-Bretèche)

Parks and Gardens[]

Chèvreloup Arboretum (Rocquencourt)
Marly Estate (Marly-le-Roi)
Vaux sur Seine Castle Garden (Vaux sur Seine)
The King's Vegetable Garden (Versailles)

Politics of Yvelines[]

Former Prime Minister of France Michel Rocard, was an MP for this department, of the French Socialist Party.

Senators from Yvelines[]

Nicolas About (Centrist Union)
Jacques Bellanger (Socialist Party)
Dominique Braye (UMP)
Alain Gournac (UMP)
Gérard Larcher (UMP)

References[]

^ "Communiqué de la présidence de la République" (in French). http://elysee.fr/documents/index.php?lang=fr&mode=view&cat_id=8&press_id=2699. Retrieved 17 October 2009.

External links[]

(French) Prefecture of Yvelines
(French) General council of Yvelines
(French) History of Famous People and Yvelines

This page uses content from the English language Wikipedia. The original content was at Yvelines. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with this Familypedia wiki, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons License.

[1] "Communiqué de la présidence de la République" (in French). http://elysee.fr/documents/index.php?lang=fr&mode=view&cat_id=8&press_id=2699. Retrieved 17 October 2009.

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