Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois: station history
Served by: RER C.
Did you know?
A station in the Essonne served by RER line C, at 59 metres above sea level, at kilometre point 25.898 of the Juvisy to Orléans line, between Épinay-sur-Orge and Saint-Michel-sur-Orge. It was opened by the Compagnie du chemin de fer de Paris à Orléans under the name Perray-Vaucluse, after the asylum that the département of the Seine had built in the forest following its purchase in 1863 of an estate of about 125 hectares. After the war of 1870-1871 the département negotiated the creation of the station and paid 50,000 francs so that all trains would stop there.
Anecdote
The name Perray-Vaucluse remains engraved on the sides of the station building. For nearly fifty years, postcards fuelled confusion by giving it as if it were a commune, when it was in fact the name of the asylum. The station became Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois only in the 1930s, even though the village of that name lies on the other side of the forêt de Séquigny.
Around Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois
- Cimetière russe, 1100 m away — The main burial ground of the Russian emigration in France, resting place of thousands of exiles since 1917.