Jardin
du Luxembourg : The
garden created in 1617 by "Boyeau de La Bareaudière",
first theorist of the French garden, on Marie de Médicis's
initiative, organized itself around a central flowerbed crowned
with terraces. Two thousand elms aligned in square framed the
perspective which stumbled in the South over the wall of the
enclosure of the Carthusian monks. The monks refusing to give
up a thumb of ground, the extension southward was realized
only at the end of the 18th century, after the disappearance
of the convent during the revolution. Luxemburg was reshaped
under the First Empire by Chalgrin, who widens and prolonged
the central perspective and created a garden in the southwest.
Of this time the balustrades date which overhang the central
flowerbed and the pond. Under the Second Empire, the percement
of streets and the neighbouring avenues the surface reduced,
but the configuration was not questioned. The princely garden in which Watteau got secretly to find
there the inspiration opened to the public in 1778. It is since,
that of the students and the local residents. Unlike the other
parks, one gave it only very rarely name-days. A bandstand,
a merry-go-round realized by Garnier and numerous shelters
were installed from the 19th century, completed by multiple
areas intended for the leisure activities and for the games
today. Spread
in all the garden, the statuary includes about eighty works,
among which
the famous series of the queens and ladies
of France, realized by representative artists of the 19th century:
Cain, Frémiet, Bourdelle, Marqueste... The garden counts
three fountains: the fountain Médicis, which carries
the weapons of the queen her pediment and to whom is leaned,
since 1869 , the fountain of the Glance, and the fountain commemorating
Eugène Delacroix, decorated with Jules Dalou's (1890)
bronze. Wallflowers, sages, dahlias... The flowerbeds succeed one
another in flowerbeds and which are renewed three times a year.
In the summer months add to it orange trees, palm trees - date
palms, pomegranate trees and oleanders, certain old men of
two centuries. Due to and of other one of the palace extend
standing woody surfaces of white chestnut trees. Isolated by
a plant screen consisted of laurels, aucubas and privets, the
landscape garden offers a big variety of essences and contains
an orchard, a vestige of the nursery of the Carthusian monks,
including two thousand variety show of apples and pear trees
planted in wall bars. One of
the most beautiful Parisian gardens, romantic as one pleases.
Big
flowerbeds to the French that loved, before the
current students, Baudelaire, Gérard de Nerval, Verlaine
and Rilke... Main essences of the Parisian parks are selected according
to their capacities to support repeated prunings and to resist
to the atmospheric pollution and to the diseases. It is the
case of chestnut trees, lime trees and maples that constitute
so many refuges for birds. If most great majority of them show
in spring, some adapt themselves better to winter as lesser
spotted woodpecker big as a sparrow, or still a firecrest the
smallest bird of Europe. Of the
time of St Louis, rose on this ground a cursed building called
Vauvert's
castle. Later, grounds bought by Marie de
Médicis from the duke of Luxemburg were swampy. Gases
which escaped from their foul waters ignited to form will-o'-the-wisp.
Where from the idea of the devil, and so, the expression "aller
au diable Vauvert" (to go to the devil). To the
left of the entrance, by the place Edmond-Rostand, the loving
meetings
look themselves near the Médicis's
magnificent fountain surrounded with plane trees. it dates
1624, but sculptures are of the 19th century. The most beautiful
place of the district to court.
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