Suresnes-Mont-Valérien: station history
Served by: Transilien L and U.
Did you know?
A station in the Hauts-de-Seine served by Transilien lines L and U, at kilometre point 11.075 of the line, at 69 metres above sea level, between Puteaux and Le Val d'Or. The station opened in 1840; its present station building dates from 1984. In the 1950s the municipality renamed it Suresnes-Mont Valérien, in reference to the mont Valérien. The Foch hospital stands just opposite, east of the tracks, and the collège Émile-Zola close by, to the north.
Anecdote
In 1889 the opening of the Moulineaux line led to the creation of the Suresnes - Longchamp station, located below the old station. At the end of the 1950s SNCF created at Suresnes an intermediate terminus between Bécon-les-Bruyères and Saint-Cloud, with a central dead-end track. That siding housed a Z 6400 train set from the 1970s and was filled in when the La Verrière - La Défense link opened in 1994. A paying park-and-ride of 190 spaces is laid out.
Audio guide
Mont-Valérien Memorial, a tribute to deported French fighters and resistance fighters
In Suresnes, a clearing saw more than 1,000 men fall. 🕯️
Under the Occupation, the Fort du Mont-Valérien became the main place of execution of the German army in France. Between 1941 and 1944, about 1,000 resistance fighters, hostages, foreigners and Jews were shot, including Honoré d 'Estienne d 'Orves and twenty-two members of the Manouchian group, on February 21, 1944.
Before the clearing, the convicts passed through a chapel whose walls still keep track of their graffiti. A German chaplain, Father Franz Stock, accompanied them until their last moments: the esplanade today bears his name. 🕊️
On June 18, 1960, twenty years after the 1940 call, General de Gaulle inaugurated the Memorial of Fighting France here: a cross of Lorraine, sixteen high reliefs and a crypt where sixteen World War II fighters rest. In 2021, Hubert Germain, the last Companion of the Liberation, joined them. 🇫🇷
Disturbing detail: the 1960 ceremony did not say a word about the gunmen. Their names were not engraved in stone until 2003.
Today, the "Path of Remembrance" retraces the path of the condemned on foot, from the chapel to the clearing.
Around Suresnes-Mont-Valérien
- Mémorial de la France combattante, 700 m away — The Mont-Valérien memorial, the main place where the German army executed Resistance fighters; a ceremony is held there every 18 June.
- Cimetière américain de Suresnes, 400 m away — An American military cemetery on the slope of Mont-Valérien facing Paris, dedicated to soldiers who died in the two world wars.
- Musée d'histoire urbaine et sociale de Suresnes, 450 m away — Housed in the former Suresnes-Longchamp station, it traces the town's history and its inter-war social urbanism under Mayor Henri Sellier.