Yvelines

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Yvelines
Department
Prefecture building of the Yvelines department, in Versailles

Coat of arms
Location of Yvelines in France
Coordinates: 48°50′N 1°55′E / 48.833°N 1.917°E / 48.833; 1.917Coordinates: 48°50′N 1°55′E / 48.833°N 1.917°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
Area1
 • Total 2,284 km2 (882 sq mi)
Population (2006)
 • Total 1,395,804
 • Rank 9th
 • Density 610/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 defunct 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.

See also Map of Yvelines.

Demographics

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

Place of birth of residents

Place of birth of residents of Yvelines in 1999
Born in Metropolitan France Born outside Metropolitan France
85.5% 14.5%
Born in
Overseas France 		Born in foreign countries with French citizenship at birth¹ EU-15 immigrants² Non-EU-15 immigrants
1.1% 3.0% 4.2% 6.2%
¹This group is made up largely of former French settlers, such as pieds-noirs in Northwest Africa, followed by former colonial citizens who had French citizenship at birth (such as was often the case for the native elite in French colonies), and to a lesser extent foreign-born children of French expatriates. Note that a foreign country is understood as a country not part of France as of 1999, so a person born for example in 1950 in Algeria, when Algeria was an integral part of France, is nonetheless listed as a person born in a foreign country in French statistics.
²An immigrant is a person born in a foreign country not having French citizenship at birth. Note that an immigrant may have acquired French citizenship since moving to France, but is still considered an immigrant in French statistics. On the other hand, persons born in France with foreign citizenship (the children of immigrants) are not listed as immigrants.

Tourism

Palaces and Châteaux

Museums

Artist's and Writer's Houses

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

Senators from Yvelines

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Communiqué de la présidence de la République" (in French). Retrieved 17 October 2009. 

External links

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