The Parc départemental des sports de Marville (, ''Marville Departmental Sports Park''), commonly called Parc des sports de Marville or just Parc de Marville, is a public sports and leisure complex stretching across the

municipalities A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality' ...

La Courneuve La Courneuve () is a commune in Seine-Saint-Denis, France. It is located from the center of Paris. History Inhabited since pre-Roman times, the area is thought to have been a small village up through the Middle Ages. With its proximity to Par ...

and Saint-Denis,

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

. Activities on offer include various

football codes Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

beach volley Beach volleyball is a team sport played by two teams of two to four players each on a sand court divided by a net. Similar to indoor volleyball, the objective of the game is to send the ball over the net and to ground it on the opponent's side o ...

track and field Track and field (or athletics in British English) is a sport that includes Competition#Sports, athletic contests based on running, jumping, and throwing skills. The name used in North America is derived from where the sport takes place, a ru ...

archery Archery is the sport, practice, or skill of using a Bow and arrow, bow to shooting, shoot arrows.Paterson ''Encyclopaedia of Archery'' p. 17 The word comes from the Latin ''arcus'', meaning bow. Historically, archery has been used for hunting ...

sport shooting Shooting sports is a group of competitive sport, competitive and recreational sporting activities involving proficiency tests of accuracy, precision and speed in shooting — the art of using ranged weapons, mainly small arms (firearms and airg ...

and

swimming Swimming is the self-propulsion of a person through water, such as saltwater or freshwater environments, usually for recreation, sport, exercise, or survival. Swimmers achieve locomotion by coordinating limb and body movements to achieve hydrody ...

. It used be known as a "parc interdépartemental", a class of community sports parks in the Greater Paris area that are co-managed by the city of Paris proper and a neighbouring

département In the administrative divisions of France, the department (, ) is one of the three levels of government under the national level (" territorial collectivities"), between the administrative regions and the communes. There are a total of 101 ...

. Since 2019, the département of

Seine-Saint-Denis () is a department of France located in the Grand Paris metropolis in the region. In French, it is often referred to colloquially as ' or ' ("ninety-three" or "nine three"), after its official administrative number, 93. Its prefecture is Bobi ...

has been managing the park on its own, and it has been renamed accordingly as a "parc départemental".

Stade Marville

History

The park's best known venue is the Stade Marville. It was originally envisioned as a

hippodrome Hippodrome is a term sometimes used for public entertainment venues of various types. A modern example is the Hippodrome which opened in London in 1900 "combining circus, hippodrome, and stage performances". The term hippodroming refers to fr ...

and then a greyhound race track, but neither activities panned out. Instead the entire domain started being used for cross country races, and officially became known as Parc des sports de La Courneuve in 1922. It proved popular enough that the

French Athletics Federation The French Athletics Federation (, FFA) is the governing body for the sport of athletics in France. History FFA is the heir to the Union des Sociétés Françaises de Sports Athlétiques (USFSA), founded November 20, 1887. In 1912, a French dele ...

considered moving its headquarters from

Colombes Colombes () is a Communes of France, commune in the northwestern suburbs of Paris, France, from the Kilometre zero, centre of Paris. In 2019, Colombes was the List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, 53rd largest city in France. ...

to La Courneuve, before transportation concerns put a damper on the possibility. The département of

Seine The Seine ( , ) is a river in northern France. Its drainage basin is in the Paris Basin (a geological relative lowland) covering most of northern France. It rises at Source-Seine, northwest of Dijon in northeastern France in the Langres plat ...

(as it was then known) still financed an extensive makeover to remodel the main building into a bonafide sports stadium, with the new version opening in 1932.

Tenants

The stadium has had a variety of short-term tenants over the years, mostly clubs from close Paris suburbs who outgrew their regular venue by ascending through the ranks of their sport. Perhaps the most notable is

Red Star F.C. Red Star Football Club (), known as Red Star FC or simply Red Star, is a French professional football club founded in Paris in 1897, and is the fourth oldest French football club, after Standard AC of Paris, Le Havre AC and Girondins de Bord ...

, a soccer club from nearby

Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine (; literally "Audoin (bishop), St. Audoin on Seine") is a Communes of France, commune in the northern suburbs of Paris, France, located from the Kilometre zero, centre of Paris. It is part of the Seine-Saint-Denis Department ...

, which played at Marville between 1998–99 and 2001–02, originally to satisfy the requirements of Division 2, for which its usual venue

Stade Bauer The Stade Bauer is a football stadium in Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine in the northern suburbs of Paris. The stadium is mainly used by Red Star F.C. who currently play in Ligue 2 from 2024–25 but have tasted success in the Coupe de France, winning it o ...

was unsuitable. The club had long considered permanently moving some of its activities to Marville and finally followed suit in 2019, when it transferred its academy to the stadium. In 2021, Red Star's professional team also started training at Stade de Marville. Another club with strong ties to the venue is the Flash de La Courneuve, a

gridiron football Gridiron football ( ),"Gridiron football"
''Encyclopædia Britannica'' ...

club which has used the venue for its

European Football League The European Football League (EFL) established in 1986, was a tournament for the best European American football American football, referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada and also known as gridiron football, is a ...

games. Prior to the Red Star's move, the club had expressed interest in making the stadium its main venue.

Marville Swimming Pool

In 1955, a semi-permanent swimming pool was added to the park. It was replaced by a larger, permanent facility in 1975, called Piscine de Marville or sometimes Piscine de Marville Saint-Denis. The building will be replaced again by a new aquatic center in time for the

2024 Paris Olympics The 2024 Summer Olympics (), officially the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad () and branded as Paris 2024, were an international multi-sport event held in France from 26 July to 11 August 2024, with several events started from 24 July. P ...

Events

2024 Olympic Games

The Parc de Marville will host several training venues during the 2024 Summer Olympics. The new aquatic center was originally slated to host

water polo Water polo is a competitive sport, competitive team sport played in water between two teams of seven players each. The game consists of four quarters in which the teams attempt to score goals by throwing the water polo ball, ball into the oppo ...

competitions, but this changed and it will now only act as a training facility. The park's

futsal Futsal is a variant of association football played between two teams of five players each on a court smaller than a football pitch. Its rules are based on the Laws of the Game (association football), Laws of the Game of association football, and i ...

hall will be used for

judo is an unarmed gendai budō, modern Japanese martial art, combat sport, Olympic sport (since 1964), and the most prominent form of jacket wrestling competed internationally.『日本大百科全書』電子版【柔道】(CD-ROM version of Encyc ...

training, while five pitches will be installed to accommodate

rugby sevens Rugby sevens (commonly known simply as sevens, and originally seven-a-side rugby) is a variant of rugby union in which teams are made up of seven players playing seven-minute halves, instead of the usual 15 players playing 40-minute halves. R ...

teams.

Fête de L'Humanité

Between 1960 and 1965, and again in 1971, the Parc des sports hosted the

Fête de L'Humanité The Fête de l'Humanité (; ''English: Festival of Humanity'') is an event organised annually by French daily newspaper ''L'Humanité'' in order to fund itself. It is the largest popular gathering in France. L'Humanité was created in 1904 by Fr ...

, one of France's major cultural festivals, sponsored by

communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...

daily newspaper ''

L'Humanité (; ) is a French daily newspaper. It was previously an organisation of the SFIO, ''de facto'', and thereafter of the French Communist Party (PCF), and maintains links to the party. Its slogan is "In an ideal world, would not exist." History ...

''.

National Ice Hockey Center bid

La Courneuve was a candidate city for the

French Ice Hockey Federation The French Ice Hockey Federation () is the governing body of ice hockey in France, as recognized by the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF). It was founded in 2006 after separation with the Fédération française des sports de glace (Eng ...

's tentative National Ice Hockey Center in 2009, with the Parc de Marville as the likely construction site. But it was passed over in favor of what eventually became

Aren'Ice Aren'Ice, also known under the working name Centre national du Hockey sur Glace (English: National Ice Hockey Center), is a multi-purpose arena primarily used as an ice rink, located in Cergy, Val-d'Oise, France. It is both the French Ice Hockey ...

Cergy Cergy () is a commune in the French department of Val-d'Oise, to the northwest of Paris. It is located from the centre of Paris, in the "new town" of Cergy-Pontoise, created in the 1960s, of which it is the central and most populated commun ...

References

{{Reflist Football venues in France Red Star FC Sports venues completed in 1921 Sports venues in Seine-Saint-Denis 1921 establishments in France