Corbeil-Essonnes stands at the confluence of the Essonne and the Seine, some thirty kilometres south-east of Paris. That position explains the town's history: the Grands Moulins de Corbeil, on the quai de l'Apport-Paris, supplied Paris with flour for centuries, and the river port long governed activity on the left bank, around the cathédrale Saint-Spire and its cloister.
To the south, on the Essonne, Essonnes formed a separate town, with its village centre around the église Saint-Étienne and the place Léon Cassé. The river turned mills there, then paper mills and gunpowder works in the nineteenth century. The two towns merged on 9 August 1951. In the twentieth century industry took over with the Safran Aircraft Engines site to the west and the semiconductor plant in the south, founded by IBM in 1964, operated under the name Altis and then taken over by X-FAB.
The geography of prices follows that three-stage history. To the west, Coquibus forms the top of the market, on a recent housing stock and a small sales volume. To the south, Moulin-Galant and Pressoir-Prompt concentrate a large share of the transactions, in developments built mostly after the war. The two old centres, that of Corbeil and that of Essonnes, hold the middle of the range, with an older and more scattered housing stock. The urban renewal areas of the north-west and the eastern slope bring up the rear.
