History of the city

The Val d'Oise includes significant forested areas, cheerful valleys: those of the Seine, the Oise, the Viosne, the Sausseron, and very fertile plains.

L'Isle-Adam is at the heart of Val d'Oise. 32 km from Paris, at the crossroads of the "Pays de France," the "Vexin Français," and the "Valois," the first jewels of the Crown of France, that of the Capetians and the Valois.

Its oldest root, in the soil of France, is the district of Nogent: a Gallic village that, under Roman occupation, became "Novigentum" and which Christianity entrusted to the monks of the Abbey of Saint-Denis.

Then came the Normans, who ascended the rivers on their drakkars to pillage the villages. The King of France then had castles built, such as the one erected in 825 on the large island in the middle of the Oise opposite Nogent.

Destroyed then rebuilt, this castle was entrusted in 1014 by Robert the Pious to Lord Adam, founder of the first family of the Châtellenie of L'Isle-Adam.

Like Adam I, his descendants added "de L'Isle" to their name.

It was Ansel III who, becoming lord of L'Isle in 1219, began to take the surname L'Isle-Adam in 1226. The island itself was then called: L'Isle-Adam.

The agglomeration forming on the left bank of the Oise, opposite this island, gradually became the village and then the town of L'Isle-Adam.

A Bourgeois Town of the 19th Century

The village extends over the left bank of the Oise to form the ancient core.

Large properties are built along the grand hunting paths connecting the island to the forest.

In the 19th century, these castles and houses were gradually destroyed to make way for more modest constructions along these same paths.

• Then urbanization moved away from the central core and the plot size reduced, the commune developed into neighborhoods in the form of individual housing of the pavilion type.