History
The small town of Marnes was formed sometime in the late 12th century when the French bishop Eudes de Sully created a village in the middle of a forest that belonged to him. The name Marnes came from the French translation of Marl clay limestone, since marl was located within the ground there.
In 1852, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, then President, bought the estate of Saint-Cloud. This area had once belonged to French Marshal of the Empire Jean-de-Dieu Soult and the Duchess of Angoulême during the First Empire. Upon becoming emperor, he built a castle for the imperial guards. In 1859-1860 he built the church of Sainte-Eugénie, at the center of town in honor of his wife Eugénie de Montijo, who liked the place. That same year, Marnes was authorized by decree of now-Emperor Napoleon III to take the name of Marnes-la-Coquette. The town also took the name Marnes-lès-Saint-Cloud, since it was a dependency of Saint-Cloud for some time. In 1878, the area became public and the castle was destroyed in the 1880s.
A portion of the area of Marnes-la-Coquette was granted to Louis Pasteur in order for him to continue his research after his discovery of the vaccine against rabies in 1885. The experiments required many rabbits and dogs to be caged, which became too much of a nuisance for the neighborhood around Pasteur's animal-house on Rue d'Ulm (5th arrondissement) in Paris. Pasteur then built his laboratory in the former location of the imperial guard house. He planned to build an institute there, but his international success allowed Pasteur to acquire land on Rue Dutot in Paris and later build the Pasteur Institute in 1888.
Villeneuve-l'Étang later on became an annex where Pasteur stayed and worked during summer. He died there on 28 September 1895 where his room is still preserved.
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