A portrait of Emmanuel Macron, president of the French Republic, leans against the wall on the floor. Two meters away, a handwritten sign proclaims a symbolic victory: “Here begins the new France.” From the window of the new mayor’s office, painted electric blue, one can see the basilica where the remains of the monarchs of France rest. But also the narrow streets of Saint-Denis (population 115,000), where the air is thick with the aroma of halal shops, and women in headscarves walk among mosques. In short, the multicultural landscape of the second-largest city in Île-de-France, the Paris region, located in the country’s poorest department and the one with the highest proportion of immigrants — one-third of the population. His arrival here has shaken France. He remains completely calm. “The portrait? It was already like that when I arrived. I didn’t take it down; I simply didn’t put it back on the wall,” explains Bally Bagayoko, the newly elected mayor of Saint-Denis.

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