Nanterre-La Folie: station history
Served by: RER E.
Did you know?
A station on RER line E, built in the La Folie district of Nanterre on the site of a former marshalling yard. The first railway built out of Paris, the Paris to Saint-Germain-en-Laye line, crossed this district in 1837, and the site became a junction towards Le Havre in 1843. In 1909, the Administration des chemins de fer de l'État, which had just taken over the bankrupt Compagnie de l'Ouest, set up vast workshops there, built by the Boussiron company; they closed in 1995. The present station has 6 tracks and 4 platforms linked by a pedestrian footbridge 12 m wide.
Anecdote
The westward extension of line E led to the station being built in place of the old marshalling yard: shuttles from Magenta ran from 6 May to 14 December 2024, then service was widened from 15 December 2024. A training centre opened in 1941 on rue François Hanriot still exists. The former yard appears in a scene of the film La Nuit des traquées (1980) by Jean Rollin. A future Grand Paris Express metro station is meant to bring three lines together here.
Around Nanterre-La Folie
- Cathédrale Sainte-Geneviève, 2300 m away — Built between 1924 and 1936 in a Romanesque-Byzantine style, it kept a 14th-century bell tower and has 1,000 m² of frescoes; listed as a historic monument in 2010.
- Puits de sainte Geneviève, 2400 m away — According to tradition, the well of the saint's birthplace and a pilgrimage site; a 40 m² mosaic has stood above it since 2017.