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Éragny (Municipality, Val-d'Oise, France)

Flag of Éragny - Image by Arnaud Leroy, 5 January 2002

Presentation of Éragny
Flag of Éragny
Flag of Éragny hoisted in Munster

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Presentation of Éragny

The municipality of Éragny (aka Éragnyragny-sur-Oise; 16,886 inhabitants in 2010; 472 ha; municipal website) is located on the left bank of river Oise, 30 km northeast of Paris.

Éragny probably emerged in the Gallo-Roman times as a settlement named Heriniacus or Areniacus. Jean d'Alesso purchased in 1564 the domain of Éragny, which would be ruled by his descendants until the French Revolution. The writer Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737-1814), the author of the famous novel Paul et Virginie (1788) lived in the old presbytery of Éragny from 1804 to his death.
At the end of the 19th century, Éragny was still a rural village, with less than 500 inhabitants. The building of the railway allowed the industrial exploitation of the local limestone quarry. In the 20th century, a paper mill was the only significant industry in the village.

Ivan Sache, 9 December 2013

Flag of Éragny

The flag of Éragny, as communicated by the municipal administration, is white with the municipal coat of arms in the middle.

Arnaud Leroy, 5 January 2002

Flag of Éragny hoisted in Munster

Flag of Éragny - Image by Klaus-Michael Schneider, 5 December 2013

The Town Hall of Munster, the German partner town of Éragny, hoisted on 17 December 2012 a white flag with the municipal arms of Éragny.
The coat of arms of Éragny is "Azure a saltire or cantonned in chief with a fleur-de-lis or dexter and sinister with two snails argent and in base with a loop argent. Inescutcheon vert a two-palmed tree argent over a meander of the same".

The arms are derived from those of the Alesso family, of Italian origin, "Azure a saltire or cantonned with four snails argent". The snails are a symbol of attachment to the land, realism, rural past and old life style. The snails are shown with heads up, after the oldest representations of the arms found in the National Library, and affronty, to increase the symmetry of the saltire design. The fleur- de-lis is the symbol of Île-de-France. The loop featured in base represents the meander of the Oise around which the 11 municipalities forming the communauté d'agglomération of Cergy-Pontoise are located. The escutcheon features the logo of the town, showing a tree rooted in the soil of Île-de-France watered and structured by the meander of the Oise represented beneath the tree.
[Municipal website]

Klaus-Michael Schneider & Ivan Sache, 5 December 2013