General Information About Montfermeil
Montfermeil is an eastern suburb of Paris in the Seine-Saint-Denis department, bordered by Clichy-sous-Bois, Coubron, Gagny, Chelles, and Courtry. Originally a small town about ten miles from the city, it was absorbed into the banlieue as Paris expanded. Like many of the eastern suburbs, Montfermeil has its bad neighborhoods, but the areas around the tourist spots are generally quite safe.
Tourist attractions include the Fontaine Jean Valjean, the Labor Museum, several historic mills around the city, many parks and green spaces, and nighttime “spectacles” at the Château des Cèdres meant to bring Montfermeil’s history to life.
Montfermeil’s official website (French)
Getting There & Getting Around
Montfermeil, once a small town in the vicinity of Paris, has now become part of the banlieue, or suburbs. As such, it’s accessible through the RER, the light rail system that serves the Paris metropolitan area and is integrated with the Metro.
Montfermeil does not have its own RER station, so you’ll have to take Line E of the RER towards Chelles/Gournay and get off at the Villemobile/Le Raincy stop. From there, take the 601 bus and get off at the Paul Bert stop at the intersection of the rue Paul Bert and the rue Henri Barbasse. It’s one of the last stops on the 601 line; all of the midway stops are not in Montfermeil but in Clichy-Sous-Bois.
Note: It’s also possible to take the RER one station further, to Gagny instead of Villemobile, and take the 604 bus to the rue de l’Eglise stop. This is theoretically closer to the Parc Jean Valjean, but unlike the 601 bus, I’ve never tried it and I can’t say firsthand where it comes out.
At the Paul Bert stop, go down the little rue Grange, which passes by the Allée du Puits (the French word for ‘well,’ as in ‘the well in the wood’), then a church. You should come up on a park, which was once the Parc Jean Valjean and has now been combined with other green spaces to create an arboretum; go down the hill on the road next to the park (chemin de l’Abîme), and at the end of the road, the Fontaine Jean Valjean is on your left.
PDF of the Montfermeil bus routes (1.62mb)
Les Mis-Related Activities
Montfermeil’s main homage to LM consists of the Parc Jean Valjean, which was recently combined with the Parc des Cèdres to form an arboretum, and the nearby Fontaine Jean Valjean.
Whether the Fontaine Jean Valjean actually stands at the spot where Valjean picked up little Cosette’s bucket is up for debate: Hugo describes the spring as being in the woods off the road to Chelles, and the fountain’s nearest cross street–the chemin de l’Abîme–does indeed lead to Chelles. Nearby street names, such as the Allée du Puits (Alley of the Well) also seem to support this, but the fountain isn’t actually that far from the center of town, and I’m not sure whether the area was actually forested in the 19th century. In any case, the fountain and the nearby park make a nice tribute to one of the most iconic scenes of the novel.
The fountain itself can be a bit hard to find, especially since the creation of the arboretum has made most maps of the area inaccurate. To the best of my knowledge, the Place de la Fontaine Jean Valjean is now at the point where the street of the same name meets the new playground built near the arboretum. The fountain is just a niche in the old stone wall there.
No definite location exists for where Hugo intended the Thénardiers’ inn to be, but it’s probably not a coincidence that he once stayed in a tavern off the Place de la Halle called “Au Rendez-Vous d’Austerlitz.”
List of historic places in Montfermeil (French)
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