Member of the new city of Cergy-Pontoise, it benefits from an excellent public transport connection to Paris. The city is renowned with the construction of its famous abbey of Maubuisson in the thirteenth century. The rural exodus and the development of industries gave the commune a new life, as did the arrival of the railway in the nineteenth century. Today, the city of Paris is best known for its tourist activities linked to an important architectural heritage, as well as its proximity to Paris and its monuments.
Built in the 13th century, Maubuisson is a Cistercian abbey classified to the Historic Monuments. From this impressive site, there is still today the monks' dormitory, the chapter house or the latrines. Financed by Blanche de Castille, mother of King Louis IX, the abbey was partly decimated after the French Revolution, becoming a military hospital, then a stone quarry.
Renovated in the s, it now houses the contemporary art center of the General Council of Val-d'Oise. Temporary exhibitions are regularly organized and the site also serves as a laboratory for research and production all year round.
Outside the building you can admire several hydraulic installations such as a collecting canal, a covered bridge or a dyke. Do not miss the tower of the Bourseaux, the only vestige of the land on which the abbey was built. Also classified as a Historic Monument, the tithing barn was an annex to the abbey built in the middle of the 13th century. If the floor of the attic has disappeared, we can still see the original oak wood frame. Reorganized at the end of the last century, the site serves mainly as a place of exhibitions.
The church of Saint-Ouen dates from the first half of the 12th century and was built in a charming Romanesque style. Inscribed in the Historic Monuments, it was largely reworked in the nineteenth century unveiling non-homogeneous parts like its unfinished transept or its aisles in flamboyant Gothic. The latter dates from the beginning of the 20th century and was endowed with a porch and stained glass windows in the early s.
