La Villette, Seine
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d1/%C3%89glise_Saint-Jacques-et-Saint-Christophe_de_la_Villette%2C_fa%C3%A7ade_01.jpg/220px-%C3%89glise_Saint-Jacques-et-Saint-Christophe_de_la_Villette%2C_fa%C3%A7ade_01.jpg)
La Villette (French pronunciation: [la vilɛt] ) was a French commune (municipality) in the Seine département lying immediately north-east of Paris. It was one of four communes[1] entirely annexed by the city of Paris in 1859.[2] Its territory is now located in the 19th arrondissement, but a neighborhood has retained its name: the quartier de La Villette and the Parc de la Villette.
A Gallo-Roman village stood here along the Roman road that led north from Lutetia. About 1198 the district was named the Villa Nova Sancti Lazari, in French Ville Neuf Saint-Ladre, the "new village of Saint-Ladre", which referred to the leper hospice dedicated to the lepers' patron Saint Lazare (Ladre); it became Villette-Saint-Ladre-lez-Paris in a document of 1426.
In 1790, the Constituent Assembly of Revolutionary France raised the hamlet to the status of a commune.
Notes
[edit]- ^ The others were Belleville, Grenelle and Vaugirard.
- ^ Des villages de Cassini aux communes d'aujourd'hui: Commune data sheet La Villette, EHESS (in French).
48°53′N 2°23′E / 48.89°N 2.38°E