La Villette () was a French commune (municipality) in the Seine département lying immediately north-east of Paris. It was one of four communesThe others were Belleville, Grenelle and Vaugirard. entirely annexed by the city of Paris in 1859. Its territory is now located in the 19th arrondissement, but a neighborhood has retained its name: the and the Parc de la Villette.
A Gallo-Roman village stood here along the Roman road that led north from Lutetia. About 1198 the district was named the Villa Nova Sancti Lazari, in French Ville Neuf Saint-Ladre, the "new village of Saint-Ladre", which referred to the leper hospice dedicated to the lepers' patron Saint Lazare (Ladre); it became Villette-Saint-Ladre-lez-Paris in a document of 1426.
In 1790, the Constituent Assembly of Revolutionary France raised the hamlet to the status of a commune.
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