Subway: Odeon
Open: daily
Jardin du Luxembourg is a beautiful garden that covers a total area of 25 hectares or 60 acres around central Luxembourg Palace. It was constructed in the early 17th century for Marie de Medicis, widow of Henri IV who was assassinated by a Francois Ravaillac, a fanatical Catholic in 1610. The residence and the gardens were opened to the public in the 19th century by its owner Comte de Provence. Today it houses the French Senate. The gardens are dominated by a large octagonal lake.
Jardin du Luxembourg or the gardens of Luxembourg
(in French, Jardin du Luxembourg), familiarly nicknamed Luco, are a
Parisian public park of 22.45 ha, located in the Sixth District. The
Luxembourg is the garden of the French Senate, whose seat is in the
palace of Luxembourg. It is a private park that is open to the
public. It underwent numerous changes throughout its history, and
the current design corresponds for the most part to the works built
by the architect Jean-François-Thérèse Chalgrin during the First
French Empire. It was later cut by the peripheral urbanization works
of Baron Haussmann.
Jardin du Luxembourg include several fenced play areas, very popular
with the little ones and their parents, and nearby there is a
popular puppet theater and a merry-go-round. Children can ride on
pony and donkey and enjoy the rides they can take with them. In
addition, there are free musical performances at a kiosk and there
is a restaurant nearby, under shady trees, with tables both inside
and outside. outdoors, to listen to the music while enjoying a glass
of wine. There is another cafeteria-restaurant in another part of
the garden.
Jardin du Luxembourg is pleasant for its tranquility. Children play
in the small pond having fun and enjoying this one can rent small
sailboats. The garden contains many statues and sculptures to
admire. Surrounding the central parterres, there are a number of
ancient statues of French queens.
Jardin du Luxembourg has many fun and educational activities. There
are classes of initiation to beekeeping, with several hives, and
there is a free horticulture school. This has an orchard of more
than 1000 fruit trees that houses a valuable collection of ancient
species of apple and pear trees.The classes of both schools are
given in the Pavilion Davioud, a small building erected in 1867 to
house a cafe-restaurant. The garden has tennis courts, basketball
courts and palm courts, and martial arts are practiced in authorized
areas.
The current building of the Orangerie was built in 1839 to replace
previous buildings. It houses 180 species of trees in pots such as
citrus fruits, date palms, oleanders and pomegranates, which adorn
the garden in spring. It has bigarade orange trees from 250 to 300
years old.
The current greenhouses of Jardin du Luxembourg were created at the
end of the 18th century, on the site of an earlier greenhouse that
belonged to a Carthusian convent. There flowers are grown that serve
for the flowerbeds of the garden and for the decoration of the
Senate. Account since 1838 with a collection of more than 10 000
orchids.
The National Higher School of Mines in Paris and the Odeon Theater
are next to the Luxembourg Gardens. The park's opening hours depend
on the sunlight schedules and vary according to the season: it opens
between 7:30 and 8:15 in the morning, while it closes between 4:30
and 9:00: 30 in the afternoon
The park, which is particularly popular with Parisian families,
students from neighboring universities and joggers, offers a wide range
of leisure and sporting activities. In the southwestern area it
resembles an amusement park. Here the younger children have at their
disposal the Kasperle-Theater called Guignol, housed in a solid stone
miniature theatre, the origins of which date back to 1881, an old
children's carousel designed by Charles Garnier and sung about by Rilke
and ponies for horseback riding and carriage rides, the larger ones an
adventure playground. There are also tennis and basketball courts, as
well as facilities for the jeu de paume, a game played with the palms of
the hands, a precursor to tennis. There is a covered chess court, a
boulodrome and two coffee gardens. In front of the garden facade of the
castle there is a water basin in which traditionally self-made or rented
model boats sail in the wind. Outdoor concerts take place under a
bandstand by the main entrance on Boulevard Saint-Michel. Photo
exhibitions are also regularly held there on the outside of the bars.
At the extreme southwestern tip of the garden is the beekeeping
school, which is open to everyone upon registration, and the carefully
tended orchard with its espaliers. The products of the once royal garden
are exhibited in the Orangery every autumn and offered for sale.
The garden was designed from 1611 or 1612 on behalf of Maria de
Medici, the Italian widow of King Henry IV, for her country palace,
which was then being built outside the city limits. This was based
at least in part on the plans for the Palazzo Pitti in Florence,
where Maria de Medici grew up. The garden was supplied with water
from what later became known as the Aqueduc Médicis, under the
direction of Thomas Francine, Intendant des Eaux et Fontaines du Roi
(Royal Fountain Master). Although the south wing of the palace and
the adjoining garden underwent major changes in the 19th century,
they have retained a slight Italian flair that is emphasized by the
palm trees planted in boxes.
The original garden already had
large stands of trees, flower borders and also water basins, for
which the Aqueduc Médicis, coming from near Rungis, was built
between 1613 and 1624. The horseshoe-shaped ramp in front of the
garden facade around the central water basin facing south, with its
raised terraces, also existed in a similar form at the beginning of
the 17th century, but received its marble statues, including the
statue of Queen Maria de Medici, only in the 19th century. The park
contains many other statues and works of art, including a copy of
the Statue of Liberty by Auguste Bartholdi (entrance to the park:
Rue de Fleurus).
After the garden had been enlarged in 1617
by exchanging part of the walled monastery grounds of the
Carthusians, Louis XIV, grandson of Maria de Medici, had the
horseshoe ramp complemented by the grandiose perspective of the
Avenue de l'Observatoire, which offers the view over the formerly
here determined Paris Prime Meridian to the Paris Observatory. The
park attracted a wider audience as early as the 17th century. (Henri
Sauval noted in 1650 that he was "sometimes public, sometimes not").
In the 18th century, the garden was a popular place for promenades
for writers: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Denis Diderot, among others,
strolled here.
Over time, the garden area underwent several
changes: in 1782 by the then owner, the Comte de Provence, the
brother of Louis XVI. and later King Louis XVIII. Amputated by six
hectares (to finance the restoration of the castle), it was enlarged
again during the Revolution when the property that had remained in
the Carthusian monastery until then was confiscated.
From
1817 to 1859 Julien-Alexandre Hardy was chief gardener of the Jardin
du Luxembourg, which at the time owned one of the world's largest,
finest and most famous collections of roses, originally planted by
André Dupont (1742-1817), one of Empress Joséphine's gardeners. had
been created and was considerably expanded by Hardy, including
through their own new rose breeds.
Finally, in 1865, under
Napoleon III. and his prefect Georges-Eugène Haussmann by building
the rue Auguste Comte and houses to the east and south. This
affected, among other things, the site of the tree nursery
(Pépinière) and the botanical garden, which Guy de Maupassant
particularly valued. Five petitions from protesting citizens, one of
them with the then high number of 12,000 signatures, remained in
vain.
The then famous rose garden was destroyed in World War
I.
In his song Entre 14 et 40 ans (1973), the chansonnier
Maxime Le Forestier addressed a ban on entering the park for young
people and young adults around 1970.
The central pool with its fountain and stand for renting miniature
sailing boats is a popular meeting place for children.
The Fontaine
Médicis (1620), probably erroneously attributed to Salomon de Brosse, is
a grotto-shaped nymphaeum. It was originally planned and executed by
Thomas Francine under the name Grotte du Jardin du Luxembourg. In 1864,
when Alphonse de Gisors was laying the Rue de Médicis, it was moved to
its current location, remodeled and provided with statues (1866) by
Auguste Ottin.
The Fontaine du Regard was moved from the former
Carrefour Saint-Placide (now Rue de Rennes) to the rear of the Fontaine
Médicis on the orders of Jean Chalgrin. The elegant marble relief Leda
and the Swan (1807) in Neo-Renaissance style is by Achille Valois, the
two water nymphs resting on the slope of the pediment (1864) by
Jean-Baptiste Klagmann.
from the 16th century:
David's victory over Goliath and Nymph, two
ancient-style marble sculptures on tall columns (either side of the
central pool)
from the reign of Louis Philippe:
Statues of the
French Queens and Famous Ladies of France (1846-1850), by Auguste Ottin,
Augustin Dumont, Jean-Baptiste Klagmann, Jean-Jacques Feuchère and other
artists (horseshoe ramp)
From the romantic era:
Velleda
(1839-1844) by Hippolyte Maindron after a work by Chateaubriand, one of
the major plastic works of the Romantic era
The Dancing Faun (1851)
by Eugène Lequesne
Portraits of famous artists or writers
(clockwise from the east gate of Rue de Vaugirard):
Murger (1895) by
Théophile Bouillon (in the north-east area)
Charles Leconte de Lisle
(1898) with a Goddess of Glory, by Denys Puech (in the eastern area)
George Sand (1905) by François Sicard (idem)
Stendhal, bronze
medallion by Auguste Rodin after David d'Angers (idem)
Flaubert by
Auguste Clésinger (idem)
The Mask Merchant (1883) with a remarkable
plinth showing the masks of Corot, Alexandre Dumas the Elder, Hector
Berlioz, Carpeaux, Jean-Baptiste Faure, Eugène Delacroix, Honoré de
Balzac and Barbey d'Aurevilly, by Zacharie Astruc
Baudelaire from
Fix-Masseau (in the southern area)
La comtesse de Ségur (1910) by
Jean Boucher (idem)
Watteau (1896), Pewter bust and allegory of youth
in the style of gallant painting of the 18th century, by Henri Gauquiné
(idem)
Eustache Le Sueur (1858) by Honoré Husson (idem)
José-Maria
de Heredia by Victor Ségoffin (idem)
Sainte-Beuve (1898) by Denys
Puech (idem)
Chopin (1900) by Georges Dubois (in the western area)
Paul Verlaine by Rodo (idem)
Beethoven, bronze bust by Antoine
Bourdelle (in the southwest corner)
Delacroix (1890), cenotaph with
allegories of Time and Fame and a Guardian Angel of the Arts, one of the
main works in the Luxembourg Gardens, by Jules Dalou (to the north, on
the border of the Petit Luxembourg)
Various
The "Luxembourg"
chairs, specially developed for the park, are now used worldwide.