Guyancourt is a city of Yvelines, about twenty kilometers southwest of Paris, and neighboring Versailles.
This proximity leads from the end of the 17th century a quasi-annexation of the territory of the town within a hunting reserve around the castle that built Louis XIV. Some lands are still cultivated but many are left fallow.
After the revolution, the village finds its agricultural vocation. From the 1970s, the city is at the heart of the development program of the Paris region launched by De Gaulle and the construction of the new city of Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines. Now composed of six districts including the historic village, its population has grown from 1,500 inhabitants in 1968 to nearly 29,000 today. Guyancourt enjoys, by the agglomeration of Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines label city of Art and History, its urbanization having succeeded in preserving rich heritage testimonies (like old farms judiciously rehabilitated).
The city which also hosts many companies (such as the technical center of Renault or Thales) has also preserved many forest and natural areas, thanks in particular to the classification of the Bièvre Valley, a tributary of the Seine which has its source in Guyancourt same.
A visit of Guyancourt begins ideally with the village which is now the city center. In particular, there is the Saint-Victor church, of Gothic style, whose oldest sections of construction (like the base of the bell tower) date from the end of the 12th century. Several times overhauled, the building listed in the supplementary inventory of historic monuments includes a choir rebuilt in the sixteenth century. However, it is only recently that real treasures have been uncovered: the discovery of Merovingian sarcophagi during archaeological excavations in 1998 and a charcoal painting of the 17th century on the inside wall of the entrance gate, evoking Saint George slaying the dragon, during works in 2011.
A few steps away, the new town hall inaugurated in 1995 is intended as a connection point between the past of the city. It is indeed connected to the farm of Bel Ébat, one of the old farms (now rehabilitated theatrical space) testifying to the time when Guyancourt, from the revolution to the 1930s, was a locality turned to agriculture, and modernist design (alloy glass, stone and aluminum that is an echo of recent urbanization). Subtle detail, the old town hall of the nineteenth is reflected in the large glass panels.
In another area, the Bouviers Battery is also worth seeing. Built in 1879 to house batteries of guns in the second belt of fortifications supposed to protect Paris, it lost its military vocation in the 1930s when the car company Hispano-Suiza invests part of the site to perform its engine tests intended in aeronautics. Disused in the late twentieth century, the site has since undergone a remarkable rehabilitation, preserving many original elements, and now includes a music school, an auditorium, a concert hall, and three studios. repetition.
A visit of Guyancourt finally includes a walk in the many woods, parks and gardens, since the different neighborhoods built over the decades are all, in fact, punctuated with green spaces.
Modern city with quality cultural facilities and varied programming (information to the Mayor at +33 1 30 48 33 33), Guyancourt hosts each year in June a festival of amateur theater, at the farm of Bel Ebat-Theater Guyancourt, in the "old" village.
In May, the city hall showroom features ArTalents, a time dedicated to a retrospective devoted to a "visual" artist recognized as many "amateurs".
A feast of associations, every second Saturday of September, and a fair at the flea market, the third Sunday of September, also attract a large audience in the fall.
As a testimony to its rural past, Guyancourt counts two famous markets, Wednesday and Saturday from 8h to 13h.
