Argenteuil
Argenteuil (French: [aʁʒɑ̃tœj] (listen)
) is a commune in the northwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located 12.3 km (7.6 mi) from the center of Paris. Argenteuil is a sub-prefecture of the Val-d'Oise department, the seat of the arrondissement of Argenteuil.
Argenteuil is the second most populous commune in the suburbs of Paris (after Boulogne-Billancourt) and the most populous one in the Val-d'Oise department, although it is not its prefecture, which is shared between the communes of Cergy and Pontoise.
Argenteuil shares borders with communes in 3 departements others than Val d'Oise : the Yvelines, Hauts-de-Seine and Seine-Saint-Denis departements.
The name Argenteuil is recorded for the first time in a royal charter of 697 as Argentoialum, from a Latin/Gaulish root argento meaning "silver", "silvery", "shiny", perhaps in reference to the gleaming surface of the river Seine, on the banks of which Argenteuil is located, and from a Gaulish language suffix -ialo[3] meaning "clearing, glade" or "place of".
Argenteuil was founded as a convent in the 7th century (see Pierre Abélard and the Convent of Argenteuil). The monastery that arose from the convent was destroyed during the French Revolution.
A rural escape for Parisians, it is now a suburb of Paris. Painters made Argenteuil famous, including Claude Monet, Eugène Delacroix, Auguste Renoir, Gustave Caillebotte, Alfred Sisley and Georges Braque.
