La Ferté-sous-Jouarre

• Name — La Ferté-sous-Jouarre • Commune Status — Commune • Insee — 77183 • Postal Code — 77260 • Arrondissement — Meaux • Canton — La Ferté-sous-Jouarre • Mayor — Ugo Pezzetta • Term — 2020–2026 • Intercommunality — CA Coulommiers Pays de Brie • Elevation Min M — 50 • Elevation Max M — 181 • Area Km2 — 10.06

This area of France has frequently been a site of warfare. In 1819, British naval officer, Norwich Duff (1792–1862), Edinburgh born, recorded a note on La Ferté. The Bourbon Restoration had apparently dampened the Napoleonic road building boom, as evidenced by unused milestones. Construction projects had rebuilt some facilities destroyed in the wars with Britain and other Powers. La Ferté is famous for millstones used for milling flour. Some have even been found in England. Among notable residents, the artist Émile Bayard was born in this town (1837). The Irish avant-garde writer, dramatist, poet and nobel prize winner Samuel Beckett lived in the neighboring hamlet of Mollien for 36 years. The town's library and secondary school are named after him. André the Giant, three times Worldwide Wrestling champion, icon of the André the Giant Has a Posse (aka Obey) street art project grew up in the local canton. As a child, the American writer and filmmaker Oliver Stone used to spend all his summer holiday at his French maternal grands-parents' hotel in La Ferté-sous-Jouarre. The area was invaded and occupied by the Germans from the beginning of the Great War, which led to considerable damage and casualties. After the war, on 14 August 1921, the town of La Ferté-sous-Jouarre was awarded the War Cross with the following citation: On the south-western edge of the town, on the south bank of the river Marne, is the La Ferté-sous-Jouarre memorial, commemorating more than 3000 British soldiers from the Great War with no known grave. They died in fighting in the area against the Germans.

Inhabitants of La Ferté-sous-Jouarre are called Fertois in French.

• Antoine of Navarre (1518–1562), King of Navarre, Father Henri IV • Charles, Cardinal de Bourbon (1523–1590), French Cardinal • Madame de Pompadour (1721–1764), member of the French court • Antoine Samuel Adam-Salomon (1818–1881), French sculptor & photography pioneer • Fanny Marc (1858–1937), French sculptor • Henri Pouctal (1860–1922), early French silent film director • Maurice Holleaux (1861–1932), 19th–20th-century French historian, archaeologist and epigrapher died in the city. • Samuel Beckett (1906–1989), Irish avant-garde writer, dramatist, and poet • Maurice Tranchant de Lunel (1869–1944), French architect born in La Ferté-sous-Jouarre • André the Giant (1946–1993), Triple Worldwide Wrestling champion, wrestler and icon of the Andre the Giant Has a Posse (Obey) street art • Oliver Stone (1946–), American writer and filmmaker. • Robert Hampson (1965–), English musician, singer, composer

• Zuffenhausen-Stuttgart, Germany