Parc Monceau in the 8th arrondissement of Paris is our local park, a five minute walk from our apartment. Our daughter’s school is based in one of the access roads, and she plays there every day. At weekends, we often walk there as a family for picnics on the undulating lawns, or for a stroll around the perimeter path with its ancient trees and jazzy flowerbeds. It is almost always full of joggers and children and thousands of other apartment-dwellers making the most of its eight hectares of green space.
It is easy to overlook the history of Monceau. First created in the 1770s as a flamboyant, theatrical garden for the future Duc d’Orléans (cousin of Louis XVI), it contained a series of follies, including a Dutch windmill, Egyptian pyramid, minaret, ruined watermill and a naumachia – an oval pond for sea jousting. A new city wall was built along its northern edge in the late 1780s, with a rotunda designed by Ledoux that served as a toll-gate.
In the 1860s, the site was bought by the city of Paris, and half was sold for development. The remaining area was laid out as a public park as part of the transformation of Paris undertaken by Baron Haussmann. New features, such as the monumental gilded entrance gates and the cascade and grotto, were added to those that remained from the original garden.
I am currently doing some work with the Friends of Parc Monceau, a group of local people trying to maintain the park’s historical character, and will post again later in the summer about developments at this special place.
[...] a book and a mug of tea. But we decided to take the long route to our local market, and went via parc Monceau. It was a splendid diversion. The vast old trees were at the peak of their autumn colour, the park [...]
[...] Presumably there are political or cultural reasons why the Jardin des Tuileries, for example, or parc Monceau, or the Jardin du Luxembourg, do not have the [...]
[...] we have seen the first snow of the season in central Paris. Parc Monceau has an icing sugar dusting of white on its grass and still-autumnal trees. Usually the City closes [...]
[...] by landscapelover A friend who sells vintage accessories has just sent me an old postcard of parc Monceau that she bought in the northeast of England. Postmarked 1905, it shows the rotunda designed by [...]
rlly kwl stuf. luv it!
[...] I shall console myself with a few photos taken this morning in parc Monceau of, well, springtime in [...]
[...] our local park, Monceau, the parks department is trying two approaches. First, it is continuing to mow sections of the [...]