Goussainville, Abandoned Town in France

Goussainville lies a thirty minute drive north from the Notre Dame Cathedral in central Paris. In 1972 the residents of Goussainville were suddenly under the direct flightpath of the newly-built Charles de Gaulle Airport. The town was now so close to the country’s largest airport in neighboring Roissy that the noise from low-flying planes became unbearable to live with. Residents of the old village watched as neighbors deserted their homes in droves, unable to stand the constant noise of the aircrafts. In the summer of 1973, during the Salon de Bourget airshow taking place in the proximity of the new CDG airport, a Concorde prototype plane crashed in Goussainville, destroying several houses and a children’s school that was luckily closed on that day. All six passengers on the plane and eight people on the ground perished. By 1973, the last 200 inhabitants of Goussainville had abandoned their homes.