Strolling Through the Parks of Paris

When you find a day full of sunshine and you're in Paris the capital of France take some time off of taking in all of the usual tourist attractions and wander through its beautiful parks.

Jardin des Tuileries

The site upon which Jardin des Tuileries is built was once a quarry for tiles. Back in the 16th century, Catherine de Medicis wished to have a palace built at the tuileries. Tuileries Palace had a lovely Italian style garden that reminded her of her native Tuscany. The palace was on the right bank of the Seine, right in front of the Louvre. The residence of French monarchs was burned by the Paris Commune in 1871 and demolished in 1883.

Jardin des Tuilleries was one of the first parks opened to the public in Paris. It quickly became the place to socialize for Parisians and in the 18th century, this park featured cafes, kiosks, deck chairs, and public restrooms.

Within the park, are many modern sculptures and a footbridge across the Seine connects it with the Musee d’Orsay. The Musee d’Orsay is a museum worth visiting as it houses some 2,300 paintings, 1.500 sculptures and other objects. The park stretches from the Place de la Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel which leads one onward to the Louvre.

Today when you visit the Jardin des Tuileries you can grab onto a chair and sit anywhere you like relaxing and enjoying nature. There are several fountains, two large basins, sculptures and even two museums the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume and the Musee de l’Orangerie. Jardin des Tuileries has been on the World Heritage List of UNESCO since 1991. In the summertime, you can see people having picnics and just relaxing in the sun.

Jardin des Tuileries is a delight for children. There are many fun activities for children to participate in like pony and donkey rides, lovely ponds with ducks that can be fed, miniature sailboats to sail, a traditional carousel, an in-ground trampoline and an adventure playground. They can also enjoy marionette puppet shows. There is also a large Ferris wheel from which visitors to the park can see Paris laid out before them with breathtaking views.

The Bois de Boulogne

It was created as a hunting ground for the Kings of France and the Bois de Boulogne became the largest area west of Paris where one could get some rest and relaxation. This lovely park has many walking paths for strolling, bridle paths for horseback riding and paths for biking. Within the park children can play in the playground, people can enjoy having picnics, and boats and bikes can be hired.

This is the second-largest park in Paris. And among its special features are:

Joggers enjoy running around the largest lake in the park The Lac Inferior and boaters can enjoy taking a ride around the lake.

In the lake is an island which can be accessed by boat. It is a joy to see the ducks and swans swimming about. The Kiosk of the Emperor, a small wooden kiosk sits on the island.

If you enjoy waterfalls then you have to see The Grand Cascade a lovely waterfall with water supplied by The Etang de Reservoir. There is also an artificial stream in the park called The Ruisseau de Longchamp.

The Mare de Saint-James with two islands has sanctuaries for birds and small animals.

Surrounded by an English landscape garden is the lovely Chateau de Bagatelle. In the rose garden along there are more than nine thousand plants. The Concours International de Roses Nouvelles de Bagatelle is held here every June and is the major competition of all the world's new roses. Art and sculpture exhibitions can be seen in the garden.

There is a pleasure garden and a zoo – The Jardin d’Acclimatation includes a zoo and amusement park where children can enjoy different rides. Children can enjoy the science museum created just for them. There is also an Asian section featuring a beautiful laquered bridge, a Korean garden and a teahouse.

There is an impressive complex of greenhouses called The Jardin des Serres d’Auteuil which has around one hundred thousand plants.

Visitors are impressed by The Pre-Catalan where they can see an amazing copper beech and a giant sequoia tree. There is an old buffet and a grand restaurant and The Shakespearean Garden includes five natural settings that have flowers, bushes, and trees mentioned in the plays written by Shakespeare.

For sports fans, there is The Hippodrome de Longchamp and the Auteuil Hippodrome are for fans of steeplechase racing and for tennis fans the complex Stade Roland Garros.

If you wish to spend some time in the park there is a campground that can accommodate 500 tents for visitors with caravans and camping vehicles.

Beautiful Bois de Vincennes

On the east side of Paris is the Chateau de Vincennes, a 14th-century chateau and once the home of the Kings of France. The park surrounding the chateau was created by Emperor Louis Napoleon. People enjoy strolling, picnicking, relaxing and boating.

Special features of the park include:

The man-made lake Lake Daumesnil is near the woods with two islands. This is a favorite place to picnic and one of the islands also has a cafe.

Here you'll also find the Temple d'Amour.

Open during the spring and summer is the Buddhist Center with a statue of Buddha and a wooden pavilion.

The Parc Floral is located at the east end of the park and has lots of flowers and botanical plants. Among the flowers, you can see statues. During the spring and summer jazz concerts are held and people can see plays on the central stage.

Lac des Minimes is a beautiful lake with a bridge that takes one to an island with a restaurant. There are two more islands and one is home to a Medieval Monastery.

You can delight in tropical plants among others at the Jardin Tropical de Paris.

Within the park is also the Parc Zoologique de Paris which is divided into five bio-zones - Europe, Madagascar, Guyana, SahelSudan, and Patagonia. Within their own territories, the animals roam free. Visitors can enjoy seeing jaguars, wolves, giraffes, rhinos, walruses, and sea turtles. Other exhibits include birds, reptiles, and exotic insects. For refreshments, there are two restaurants.

For horse racing fans there is the Hippodrome of Vincennes featuring harness racing, Concerts have been held here with world-class acts by artists like Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, the Grateful Dead, and Michael Jackson.

Children enjoy the Ferme Georges Ville named after a French agronomist. The small farm lets children see a real working farm and can enjoy animals like sheep and pigs.

Parc Floral de Paris

Ah, to be in Paris and to stroll in the city’s lovely parks, to feel free, to gaze at the loveliness all about and simply, say C’est la vie or such is life. Park Floral is a lovely garden that was originally built in order for the city to be able to host an international flower show. Although this is one of Paris’s most beautiful parks with lovely floral gardens it tends to be overlooked by tourists. However, it is well worth it to take the time and have a look at this wonderful place. Parc Floral lies just southeast of the Vincennes Castle. One must pay an entrance fee to see the park.

It was in 1969 that the government decided to have a special place created for the 3rd International Flower Show to be hosted by Paris. The grounds chosen were where previously the Pyramide and Cartoucherie military establishments had stood. Because there were buildings that were historically significant they were left standing. Retained were also a small pinewood forest and an oak grove.

Today within the Parc Floral one can see around 3,000 different kinds of plants that have been set around an artificial lake. The greatest thing about this park is that people can stroll and sit and relax among the flowers. In the Pinede or pine forest, people can picnic and there’s a children’s playground that offers them lots of space to run around in. During the springtime, the garden is at its most colorful as everything is bursting into bloom. However, you can find flowering plants all year long in the Jardin des Quatre Saisons or Garden of the Four Seasons.

There is a monumental fountain that provides water for a lovely pond full of water lilies and other aquatic plants. For the delight of visitors, there are over sixty bonsai trees and several hundred kinds of dahlias and tulips. Around the park, one can also see various kinds of sculptures.

Parc Floral also has a large exhibition hall, pavilions and patios which are used to host various kinds of cultural events. There is an annual dahlia flower contest and in the park's amphitheater the Espace Delta one can come to listen to concerts and each year there is also a jazz festival.

Parc de la Villette

This is a very large park which is quite often mentioned by tour guides. This is because it offers lots of different attractions for families. The only problem is the location as it is situated in the far northern end of Paris but it is really worth visiting.

Parc de la Villette has lots of open spaces which have earned the name “prairies”. These prairies are popular with visitors for playing games or having picnics. Some of them offer fantastic views of the Canal de l’Ourq which intersects the park. Prairie du Triangle is the part of the park which features an open-air screening of popular movies in the summertime.

Parc de la Villette is also home to the Grand Hall which was once a livestock arena. It is now a performance hall and cultural center. At the park’s east end you can find the Zenith Concert Hall and on the south side the Cite de la Musique which is another concert hall and also includes a museum, conservatory, library, and studios.

Another reason that visitors like to go to Parc de la Villette is that it gives them an opportunity to visit Europe’s largest science museum Cite des Sciences et de L’Industrie or the City of Science and Industry. Opened to the public in 1986 it also features a planetarium and lots of hands-on exhibits for young visitors. In front of the main building is a 112-foot Geode housing an IMAX Theater which has seats for 370 visitors. Nearby is the Argonaut. This is a submarine annex Navigation Museum.

Parc des Buttes Chaumont

This park offers its visitors a chance to get up to such elevations as to have a chance to get a panoramic view over the city of Paris. Due to this Parc des Buttes Chaumont has become one of the Parisians’ favorite parks and people go there for leisurely walks and weekend picnics.

It took four years to construct this park and finally it was opened to the public during the Universal Exhibition in 1857. This has been turned into a most romantic park. One of its highlights is a rocky island that has steep cliffs with a 105 ft. waterfall that plunges into an artificially made circular lake that surrounds this island. At the top of this cliff, one can find the Sybille Temple which was designed to look like the ancient Roman Temple of Sybil located in Tivoli, Italy.

Parc des Buttes Chaumont also features a grotto, a 207 ft. long suspension bridge and what is known as the “suicide bridge” which hovers more than 98 ft. above the ground. These bridges connect the island with the rest of the park and surrounding the island are paths and a very steep stairway that consists of 173 steps that lead one from the top of the belvedere onward through the grotto to the edge of the lake.

There are three restaurants in the park, two reception halls, two Guignol theaters, and two Waffle Stands. For nature lovers, there are more than 47 kinds of plants, trees, and shrubs.

Jardins de l’Observatoire

As we proceed to walk through the lovely parks of Paris we come to Jardins de l’Observatoire which connects the Jardin du Luxembourg with the Observatory of Paris. At the northern end of the avenue, there are two gardens – one is the Jardin Marco Polo and the other is the Jardin Robert Cavelier de la Salle. Both of these gardens together form an elongated park which is known as the Jardins de l’Obeservatoire.

The land these gardens were created on once belonged to Castle Vauvert which King Robert le Pieux built back in the 11th century. Later this castle was given over to the monks of Chartre and was destroyed during the French Revolution.

The Jardin Marco Polo was named in the honor of the great explorer and the Robert Cavelier de la Salle garden which is a bit larger honors the French explorer who explored the Gulf of Mexico, the Great Lakes and the Mississippi basin.

There are many columns and statues in the Jardins de l’Observatoire which have been created to honor adventurous explorers. Both gardens have playgrounds for children and ping-pong tables for visitors who would enjoy a game. There are benches upon which to sit and relax and dream.

The highlight of the park is a monumental fountain found on the south side of the Jardin Marco Polo. This fountain has several names among which are the Fontaine des Quatre Parties du Monde which in translation means Fountain of the Four Parts of the World or the Fontaine Carpeaux which is named after the main sculptor. The four parts of the world depicted are Asia showing the figure of a Chinese woman, Africa showing the figure of a dark-skinned woman, Europe showing the figure of a white woman, and America showing the figure of a woman who is an American Indian. These four incredible figures are the creation of Jean Baptiste Carpeaux and they hold up a globe that has been decorated with the signs of the zodiac. Incredibly enough the central figures are then shown surrounded by prancing sea horses which were created by Emmanuel Fremiet. This whole incredible scene is completed by statues of turtles and fish.

Champ de Mars

This park is named after the Roman God of War and it is one long stretch of grass that happens to be bordered by gardens. It is found in Paris, the City of Light, lying between the Ecole Militaire and the Seine River. From this park residents and tourists alike can see the most famous Parisian landmark the Eiffel Tower.

At one time during the 16th and 17th centuries, this was the place where grapes and vegetables were grown. When the 18th century arrived it became a military training ground for the students attending the adjacent Ecole Militaire which is a military academy. It was at this time that the park was named after the Roman God of War because it became the military training ground for as many as 10,000 students at one time.

Visitors to the park can not only feast their eyes on the incredible Eiffel Tower but they can also view the Monument to Peace which is located near the military school. When the weather is fine people love to come here for picnics and to see the lovely flowers growing in the gardens. Right near the Eiffel Tower, you can also find two ponds and there are playgrounds for children.

Champ de Mars is also the place where people come to participate in the annual Bastille Day celebrations which end with a grand fireworks display. This was also the park that was used when filming the 1985 James Bond film ”A View to a Kill”.

Jardin Atlantique

Jardin Atlantique is a unique park built in the 1990s on top of Gare Montparnasse, one of the main railway stations in Paris. It is an elevated park that cannot be seen from the street and is surrounded by high-rises. Its name comes from the high-speed train TGV-Atlantique and its starting point is the Montparnasse railway station. The train connects Paris to other cities in Brittany and southwestern France.

This beautiful park was built on top of the railway tracks of the older Montparnasse station when the modern station was constructed. The challenge to the park designers was to figure out how to grow trees and grass where there was little soil. Another challenge was to get as much daylight as possible since a great deal was obscured by the high-rises all around. The park sits on top of twelve pillars and is seventeen meters about street level.

Even though you cannot see it from below if you know Jardin Atlantique is there it is worth taking a look at and there are two elevators that will transport you to the top. One of the easiest routes is through the train station. Since the train destination from the Montparnasse station is the Atlantic coast then the Atlantic is the theme of this park. There are many patterns that resemble ocean waves and many plants in the park come from areas near the Atlantic Ocean. Making it completely unique there are sand dunes and waterfalls, a sun deck, and for children a playground that has an ocean theme.

Ile des Hesperides or the Island of the Hesperides is located right in the center of the park. This is a fountain combined with a weather station. It has a large thermometer, a rain gauge, wind vane, and an instrument measuring the wind speed.

The different types of vegetation in a series of gardens:

Grasses that move when the wind blows.

Aquatic plants.

Blue and mauve flowers.

For meditation a secluded garden.

Plants usually found on the coast.

Pine trees in the garden represent the Atlantic coast of Brittany. There are two pavilions that let you climb up to the roof and overlook all of the Jardin Atlantique.

The Memorial du Marechal Leclerc de Hauteclocque et de la Liberation de Paris – Musee Jean Moulin is located at the northern end of the park. At this museum, you can learn about the history of the French resistance during WW II and about how Paris was liberated.