Gilles Tréhin

Gilles Tréhin (born 1972) is a French artist, author, and autistic savant. He is known for creating the imaginary city of Urville. His book, also titled Urville, is based on his writings of the fictional city's history, geography, culture, and economy, and includes over 300 drawings of different districts of Urville, all done by Trehin.

Early life Gilles Tréhin was born in 1972, to Chantal and Paul Tréhin. Chantal was a maths teacher, though would later become a psychologist, and Paul was an executive at IBM. which became an autism diagnosis.

Urville Since the age of 12, in 1984, Tréhin began working on the design of an imaginary city, Urville. This arose from a visit to New York City, as well as a Lego airport that Tréhin built for his toy planes, Dumont d'Urville, which is in French territory.

In 2006, Urville by Tréhin's count had almost 12 million inhabitants, meaning that if it was real, it would have been the largest city in Europe. In 2010, Urville was covered in a documentary of the same name directed by Angela Christlieb, largely about the real areas named Urville; in Vosges, Champagne, and Calvados. It represents the fictional city using footage of night scenes from cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Brasília, which are superimposed on top of each other.

Personal life Tréhin lives in Cagnes-sur-Mer, near Nice, in southeastern France with his companion Catherine Mouet who is also autistic.