HAUTS-DE-SEINE

dpartement, le-de-France rgion, France. The dpartement extends in the shape of a crescent around the western part of Paris. It was created in 1964 from parts of the former dpartements of Seine and Seine-et-Oise, which were originally formed from a portion of the historic province of le-de-France. It comprises the northwestern, western, and southwestern suburbs of Paris, including Colombes, Courbevoie, Nanterre, Levallois-Perret, Puteaux, Rueil-Malmaison, Saint-Cloud, Svres, and Meudon. Hauts-de-Seine is bounded to the north by a loop of the Seine River above Gennevilliers. The river flows along the dpartement's northwest border, leaving it at Bougival. The woods of Ville-d'Avray, Meudon, and Verrires spill over its southwest boundary, and the park of Sceaux lies inside its southeastern corner. The northern section is largely industrial. The central part embraces Neuilly-sur-Seinea fashionable residential district east of the Seine loop and northwest of the Bois (woods) de Boulogne, which is within the city limits of Paris. Avenue de Neuilly and avenue du Charles-de-Gaulle, prolongations of the Champs-lyses, end at the Rond-Point de la Dfense (across the Seine northwest of Neuilly-sur-Seine), which in the early 1970s was developed as the central point of western Greater Paris. At the same time, highrise office and residential buildings were constructed close to the new Palace of Exhibitions. In the centre of the dpartement, southwest of Neuilly-sur-Seine, Mount Valrien, 528 feet (161 m), a place of worship since the time of the Gauls, is the site of a disused fort where the National Memorial of Fighting France commemorates the 4,500 hostages and members of the Resistance movement who were executed there by the Germans during World War II. The Autoroute de Normandie, one of the main motorways of France, begins just northeast of a tunnel under the park of Saint-Cloud; and the Autoroute du Soleil, from Paris to the Mediterranean Sea, skirts the southeastern border. The regional express railway crosses the northern half of the dpartement, running east-west through Nanterre, the capital. The dpartement has three arrondissements: Nanterre, Antony, and Boulogne-Billancourt. Area 68 square miles (176 square km). Pop. (1990) 1,391,546; (1994 est.) 1,403,463.