British School of Paris

The Machine de Marly, also known as the Marly Machine or the Machine of Marly, was a large hydraulic system in Yvelines, France, built in 1684 to pump water from the river Seine and deliver it to the Palace of Versailles.King Louis XIV needed a large water supply for his fountains at Versailles. Before the Marly Machine was built, the amount of water delivered to Versailles already exceeded that used by the city of Paris, but this was insufficient, and fountain-rationing was necessary. Ironically most of the water pumped by the Marly Machine ended up being used to develop a new garden at the Château de Marly. However, even if all the water pumped at Marly (an average of 3,200 cubic metres or 703,902 imperial gallons or 845,351 US gallons per day) had been supplied to Versailles, it still would not have been enough: the fountains running à l'ordinaire (that is, at half pressure) required at least four times as much.The Machine de Marly, based on a prototype at the Château de Modave, consisted of fourteen gigantic water wheels, each roughly 11.5 metres or 38 feet in diameter, that powered more than 250 pumps to bring water 162 metres (177 yd) up a hillside from the Seine River to the Louveciennes Aqueduct. Louis XIV had countless schemes and inventions that were supposed to bring water to his fountains. The Machine de Marly was by far his most extensive and costly plan. After three years of construction and a cost of approximately 5,500,000 livres, the massive contraption, considered the most complex of the 17th century, was completed. "The chief engineer for the project was Arnold de Ville and the 'contractor' was Rennequin Sualem (after whom the quai by the machine is now named)." Both men had experience in pumping water from coal mines in the region of Liège (in modern Belgium).The machine suffered from frequent breakdowns, required a permanent staff of sixty to maintain and often required costly repairs. It functioned for 133 years. Destroyed in 1817, it was replaced by a "machine temporaire" during 10 years and then a steam engine entered in service from 1827 to 1859. From 1859 to 1963, the pumping at Marly was assumed by another hydraulic machine conceived by the engineer Xavier Dufrayer. Dufrayer's machine was scrapped in 1968 and replaced by electromechanical pumps.

The Château de Louveciennes in Louveciennes, in the Yvelines département of France, is composed of the château itself, constructed at the end of the 17th century. It was then expanded and redecorated by Ange-Jacques Gabriel for Madame du Barry in the 18th century, and the music (or reception) pavilion was constructed by Claude Nicolas Ledoux (1770–71). The pavilion sits in the middle of a park that was designed in the 19th century.

Bougival (French pronunciation: [buʒival] (listen)) is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France. It is located 15.3 km (9.5 mi) from the center of Paris, in its western suburbs. As the site where many of the Impressionists (including Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Berthe Morisot, and Auguste Renoir) painted country scenes along the Seine, the village today hosts a series of six historical placards, known as the "Impressionists Walk," at locations from which the noted painters depicted the scenes of Bougival.Bougival is also noted as the site of the Machine de Marly, a sprawling, complicated hydraulic pumping device that began supplying the massive quantity of water required by the fountains at Palace of Versailles in the late 17th century. Considered one of the foremost engineering accomplishments of its era, the cacophonous, breakdown-prone apparatus comprised fourteen waterwheels (approximately 38 feet in diameter) driven by the current of the Seine — in turn powering more than 250 pumps, delivering water up a 500-foot vertical rise through a series of pumping stations, holding tanks, reservoirs, pipes and mechanical linkages. In use until 1817, the machine was subsequently updated, replaced with another pumping building in 1858 and finally replaced by an electrical generator in 1963. The building itself remained until 1968. Remnants are visible today at the riverbank.In Bougival, Georges Bizet composed the opera Carmen at his home at Rue Ivan Tourguenievf on the Seine and noted Russian novelist and playwright Ivan Turgenev built a dacha, Les Frênes. A local monument commemorates the Montgolfier brothers, pioneers of flight, and the commune hosts the annual Festival of Bougival et des Coteaux de Seine.

The Real World: Paris is the thirteenth season of MTV's reality television series The Real World, which focuses on a group of diverse strangers living together for several months in a different city each season, as cameras follow their lives and interpersonal relationships. It is the only season to be filmed in France. The season featured seven people living in a four-story château and is the second of four seasons of The Real World to be filmed entirely outside of the United States after The Real World: London in 1995, and before The Real World: Sydney in 2007, and The Real World: Cancun in 2009. The season was filmed over 120 days from January 19 to May 18, 2003. The season premiered on June 3 of that year and consisted of 25 episodes.

Croissy-sur-Seine (French pronunciation: ​[kʁwasi syʁ sɛn], literally Croissy on Seine) is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France. It is a suburban town on the western outskirts of Paris. Many expatriates reside in Croissy, given as it is the site of The British School of Paris, one of the top ten private international schools in the world. Croissy was Russia's base camp for Euro 2016, which ran from June 10 to July 10, 2016.

Le Vésinet–Centre is a railway station in Le Vésinet, a suburb about 16 km west of central Paris. Le Vésinet–Centre station uses a basic RER station setup, two tracks and two side platforms.

Louveciennes (French pronunciation: [luv(ə)sjɛn] (listen)) is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France. It is located in the western suburbs of Paris, between Versailles and Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and adjacent to Marly-le-Roi.

Lycée Alain is a senior high school/sixth form college in Le Vésinet, Yvelines, France, in the Paris metropolitan area. It is named after Émile Chartier, a.k.a. "Alain".

The Golden Triangle of the Yvelines is an expression used to refer to the Yvelines area of France that includes suburban Chatou, Croissy-sur-Seine, and Le Vésinet, due to the number of wealthy residents, which include many state leaders, CEOs, and celebrities. The expression Golden Triangle in a French context, initially referred to the area of Paris bounded by the Avenues des Champs-Élysées, George V, and Montaigne.

Le Vésinet (French: [lə vezinɛ] (listen)) is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France in north-central France. It is a part of the affluent suburbs of western Paris, 16.4 km (10.2 mi) from the center of Paris. Le Vésinet is one of the wealthiest suburbs of Paris, known for its wooded avenues, mansions and lakes. It contains many public gardens designed by French landscape gardener Paul de Lavenne, comte de Choulot.

The Cimetière de Louveciennes (Louveciennes Cemetery), also Cimetière des Arches, is made up of a standard laid out cemetery and a landscaped cemetery located on the Allée des Arches in the village of Louveciennes in the Yvelines département of France. The village is at the western suburbs of Paris and is between Versailles and Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and adjacent to Marly-le-Roi. Both of the Louveciennes cemeteries are bordered by a 650-metre portion of the Louveciennes Aqueduct originally built in 1684 by Jules Hardouin Mansart to supply the Palace of Versailles with water.

L'Aqueduc de Louveciennes (Louveciennes Aqueduct), sometimes called Aqueduc de Marly (Marly Aqueduct) is an aqueduct built in the 17th century under the reign of Louis XIV, located in Louveciennes (now in the French département of the Yvelines, in the west suburb of Paris). Now out of service, the aqueduct has been listed as a Monument historique since 1953. It was a part of the hydraulic network intended to provide water for the Château de Marly and the Gardens of Versailles from the Seine river, using a huge pump called the Machine de Marly. The aqueduct consists of 36 arches. Its length is 643m for a width varying from 2 to 4.4m, and a height from 10 to 20 metres.