St Mandé

A Benedictine priory dependent on the Saint-Magloire de Paris abbey settled in this tiny village in the 12th century, which led to its rapid expansion. The nearby hunting estate belonging to the royal prerogative (future Bois de Vincennes) was then isolated from the village which was surrounded by a rampart bordered by the Chaussée de l’Etang (1274 – 76). In the following century, the famous Tourelle, a dependency of the Château de Vincennes, was erected and left its name to the future district. p> Not far from there, was the castle of St Mandé ; this large residence was bought in 1653 by Nicolas Fouquet who completely transformed it. The castle and its park were located in a quadrilateral comprising approximately between avenue Daumesnil, rue Jeanne d'Arc, rue du Commandant-Mouchotte, rue de l'Épinette and boulevard de la Guyane. This superb estate fell into disuse and then into ruins after the arrest of its owner (1661)

The 19th century was the period of successive reductions of the commune:
- The enclosure of Thiers cut it off from the Bel-Air district - Part of the town, between the Cours de Vincennes and the Rue de Lagny was attached the same year (1860) to Paris.
- Finally, in 1929, in the project of the next colonial exhibition, the Bois de Vincennes was attached to Paris, which made St Mandé lose a large area.

The Paris-Bastille railway line, which started from the Place de la Bastille, was built under the Second Empire and inaugurated in 1859. It crossed the town from side to side, and there was a station, now destroyed. On July 26, 1891, it was the site of one of the first railway accidents in France, when a train returning to the station collided with a stationary train, causing 49 deaths and more than 100 injuries. This line has since been integrated into that of the RER.
St Mandé is a quiet and sought-after residential town; the chaussée de l'Étang which runs along the Bois de Vincennes at the level of the Saint-Mandé lake is, for example, a very popular route.

Remarkable architectural elements are quite rare; note:
> The Bégin hospital, built between 1855 and 1858, avenue de Paris
> The Maison de Garde, which is a large half-timbered house from the 16th century
> A rather remarkable Art Deco architectural building (90 bis chaussée de l'Étang )