Once-loved town 30 minutes from capital abandoned for 40 years after plane crash
This once charming village has been abandoned for decades.
Just half an hour from one of the world’s busiest capital cities is a town which has been almost silent for 40 years, abandoned by all the people who once called it home. Goussainville-Vieux Pays lies around half an hour’s drive north of Paris, and once upon a time,, it was a postcard perfect town.
However, as the world modernised, a tragic twist of fate left Goussainville-Vieux Pays in the past — this beautiful French village was the site of a horrific crash. In 1973, a Russian airliner had been performing aerobatic manoeuvres at the Paris Airshow when it stalled at low altitude and plummeted to the ground.
The plane landed in the village, killing 14 people (including six crew members), destroying 15 homes and the local school. After the devastating crash, the village tried hard to move on, but fate twisted once again.
The following year in 1974, the Charles de Gaulle Airport opened, putting Goussainville directly under the flight path to a busy airport.
The noise of planes was not only a constant nuisance to the people in the village, but it acted as a harrowing reminder of the tragic crash just a year prior which had devastated the sleepy village.
The majority of the villagers fled the village, not even selling their homes. The airport was later forced to purchase more than 100 of the abandoned homes and promised to take care of them. However, now these houses have been left to rot.
One of the most striking sights in this ghost village is the remnants of a rambling old manor house standing in the middle of an unkempt garden.
Graffiti has crept up over the town, and now its only real signs of life are curious tourists coming to take a look at the village left behind by the world.
