Saint-Maur-des-Fossés

Saint-Maur-des-Fossés ) is a commune in Val-de-Marne, the southeastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located 11.7 kilometres from the centre of Paris.Saint-Maur-des-Fossés owes its name to Saint-Maur Abbey founded in 638 by Queen Nanthild, regent for her son Clovis II, at a place called Fossati in Medieval Latin, Les Fossés in modern French, meaning "the moats". This place, located at the narrow entrance of a loop where the river Marne made its way round a rocky outcrop, was probably named after the moats of an ancient Celtic oppidum and later a Roman castrum; the site was known in medieval documents as Castrum Bagaudarum, at a time when the marauding Bagaudae had developed a legendary reputation as defenders of Christians again Roman persecution. Massive foundations, sited so far from a Roman frontier, were attributed by C. Jullian to a temple or a villa instead. In Merovingian times, Gallo-Roman villas in the royal fisc were repeatedly donated as sites for monasteries under royal patronage.

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