The Luxembourg Gardens
Statue of Pan in the Luxembourg Gardens.
Paris Kiosque - April 2000 - Volume 7, Number 4
Copyright (c) 2000 Paul Jensi - Used with permission.
Open dawn to dusk seven days a week; Free
Odéon, Notre Dames des Champs
Luxembourg
Paris parks are art. They are paintings by
trees, watercolor fountains and gouache paths cutting across a
canvas of verdure. They are living museums frequented by statues
where you and I are put on exposition. In Paris's gallery of
gardens, the Jardin du Luxembourg stands as one of the
city's finest works.
Once upon a Time
1615: Marie de Médicis, being
a little homesick for her native Florence, asks her husband,
Henry IV to build her a palace like the
one she had as a little monarch growing up in Italy.
1625: Work ends.
but Marie is destined to leave soon after it's finished.
When Henry dies, as Kings so often do, Marie gives the throne to
her son, Louis XIII. On the Journée des Dupes, (French
for Day of the Dumb-- ok, very rough
translation, but you get the point), Catherine asks Louis to stop
hanging out with Cardinal Richelieu. (He must have been a bad
influence.) So Louis, good son that he is, throws his buddy out.
But behind Mommy's back (the same one he's stabbing),
Louis tells the Cardinal he's just kidding and then throws
his mom out. She ends up exiled to Cologne and dies there broke
and probably more than a little bummed.
The Medici Fountain.
1626-1791: The palace and gardens slip
through one set of royal fingers to another until the French
revolution.
1792-1797: Revolutionaries
convert the palace first into a factory then into a prison.
(As if there's a difference.)
1797- Present: Napoleon I (Bonaparte) sets
it up for the Senate. Eventually, skipping over Louis-Philippe,
(King during the Restoration), and Napoleon III (Napoleon's
nephew, who also crowned himself emperor-- must be a genetic
thing) it becomes the Senate again in 1958. (Photo is the main
mall of the Senate/Luxembourg Palace).
On Your Own
To visit a Parisian park:
- Take any recognized guidebook
- Find the pages where it talks about
the park
- Tear them out and use them to pad your
shoes.
The best way to see a park in Paris is to
get lost in it. Don't bother with names or dates, (I'm
talking historical dates here), just wander until you get tired
and then sit down and enjoy the view.
Find out for Yourself
While browsing, you will discover that the
park is split in two basic parts, the organized part and the
twisted part.
Detail of the Medici Fountain.
In the orderly part you'll find:
- The Senate. This is the domed building
near the big fountain.
- Statues of the Queens of France
loitering about in a circle around the big fountain.
- Fountain des Médicis (see photo)
- Monument to students killed during the
French Resistance
In the wild part expect to see:
- Beehives
- Fruit garden
- Merry-go-round
- The Statue of Liberty. This
small-scale model was a gift by the original sculptor, a
guy named Bartholdi, to the city of Paris.
What You Can Do
But there's more to Paris than just a
quick walk around the park. If you'd rather participate than
observe, it depends on your maturity level.
Maturity of a struggling writer:
- You can always rent sailboats and
float them in the big fountain with the other
eight-year-olds.
- Try the puppet theater
- Pony rides
Comfortably Mature:
- There are tennis courts
- Read near the secluded Médicis
fountain
Overly Mature:
Near the entrance at the corner of rues Guynemer and Vaugirard,
old men play
- Chess
- Boulotte--a French card game
Terminally Mature
- Attend a Senate hearing-- they're
open to the public.
My favorite thing to do, however, is the
Parisian special, which consists of hoarding as many chairs as
you can and creating your own fort from whence you can soak up
the sun and people watch. Whatever you decide, it could always be
worse: you could be doing it somewhere other than the Jardin du
Luxembourg.
In 1990 Paul quit his job in the United States and sold everything
he had in exchange for a one-way ticket to Europe and a train pass. Figuring
he would ride the rails until his money ran out, he voyaged through most
European capitals before marrying the first French girl he met and moving to
Paris in November of that year. Since then he published 123 articles and
posted 192 of his photographs during his one-year tenure as Chief English
writer at AOL France's Digital Paris Web site. His current goal of
walking on every street in the city has revealed not only the importance of
comfortable footwear but also the splendor of the city he calls his own
(despite copyright infringement laws). He is currently working on ``Paris
Misguided'', an unguide that will help him spread that love around.
He can be contacted via
PJensi@aol.com.
Museum Passes