Parc Monceau: Old Plane Tree Walking Tour

Park Monceau

Parc Monceau (35 Boulevard de Courcelles, Paris) is located very close to the Arc de Triomphe, in the prestigious 8th arrondissement of Paris. This is an amazing and very romantic corner of living greenery on an area of 8 hectares. This English-style French park is a legacy of the Duke of Orleans. Parc Monceau is one of the oldest parks in the French capital and was opened to the public in 1852.

The history of the park began in 1778, when the Duke of Chartres (future Orleans) commissioned the artist Louis Carmontel to plan a public park in the English style on the 12 hectares of land bought here. The main task that was assigned to Carmontel was that the garden should amaze visitors. That is why the park was filled with many so-called whims - Roman colonnades, a farm, a minaret, a Dutch mill, a temple of Mars and even a small copy of the Egyptian pyramid … Camels walked in the garden among the pseudo-ruins.

In 1781, the park was partially reconstructed. And at the north entrance appeared a round rotunda built by Claude Nicolas Ledoux, on the second floor of which the Duke had an apartment. When the revolution breaks out, the duke will renounce the title and call himself a citizen of Egalite (Equality) and even vote in the Convention for the execution of Louis XVI, his relative. Although this will not save the former duke, and in 1793 he was also guillotined.

Park Monceau. Rotunda

The park was to go through a turbulent history together with Paris - the French Revolution, the restoration of the monarchy, the Third Republic and many more important events in the history of France. During its long life, the park has been expanded and renewed more than once.

It will undoubtedly be interesting for you and me to know that the central alley of Monceau Park is named after the Countess de Sejur, nee Sofia Fedorovna Rostopchina - the daughter of the Moscow governor, who set the city entrusted to him on fire in 1812, after which the disgraced governor was forced to flee from popular anger abroad. Sophie, who married the Comte de Sejure, won the fame of a famous French children's writer in Paris. The fact that this glory was fully deserved by her is evidenced by the fact that even today all the nannies and mothers with strollers who walk around here are well aware of her name, raising the offspring of the modern French nobility - counts, princes, marquises, in a word, - the cream of modern French society …

Today's Parc Monceau is a magical combination of picturesque natural views, man-made creations in the form of rotundas, gates, marble statues, as well as wide walking alleys, artificial rocks and waterfalls, winding paths strewn with gravel - another magic box of Paris, which knows how to amaze with its mysterious corners.

Park Monceau. Green walls

Parc Monceau amazes, literally, from the first step, because its guests are greeted by gates of magnificent work, which are a true masterpiece of gilding, iron casting and forging of the 19th century. Among the famous sights of the park is the rotunda created by Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, a French master of classicism architecture.

Park Monceau. Goal

The original landscape of Monceau Park is decorated with the famous dilapidated antique colonnade, made in the Corinthian style (it was copied many times in Russian Palestinians, especially resort ones), the pyramid of the Roman consul Gaius Cestius, a large-scale copy of the Egyptian pyramid, a Dutch windmill and a Chinese fortress.

Park Monceau. Corinthian clonnade

Park Monceau. Pyramid of Gaius Cestius

The extraordinary charm of Parc Monceau is that there is absolutely no asphalt in it, all the paths are sandy. A well-designed drainage system allows guests to walk comfortably along the paths even in bad weather.

Park Monceau

In the park there was a place for monuments and marble statues of famous writers and musicians, among whom the honorable place was taken by the Polish composer, virtuoso pianist Frederic Chopin, French writer Guy de Maupassant, French opera composer Ambroise Thoma.

Park Monceau

Parc Monceau is impressive, inspiring and inspiring. And a vivid proof of this is the fact that it was here that Andre-Jacques Garnerin landed here in 1797, who made the world's first parachute jump. And the fact that the greatest French artist and one of the founders of impressionism, Claude Monet, dedicated his painting to the park, entitled "In the Parc Monceau". Parc Monceau was also painted by Gustave Caillebotte, a French collector and artist, a representative of impressionism. Berlioz and Proust loved to walk in the Monceau Park.

Park Monceau. Commemorative plaque in honor of the first parachute jump

Claude Monet. In the Parc Monceau (1878)

Living attractions of the park are old-time trees growing in it: the oriental plane tree (Platane d'Orient du parc Monceau), which is 140 years old and has a trunk girth of 7 meters, and a 130-year-old maple, whose trunk girth is a little less than 4 meters. …

Oriental plane tree is the oldest tree in the park and one of the most famous trees in Paris, it is included in the list of famous trees in France (D'Arbre Remarquable de France). This tree belongs to the species of the oriental plane tree (Platanus orientalis), it was planted in 1814. According to Greek mythology, the plane tree sheltered the famous lovers - Zeus and the nymph Europa under its crown, and since then it was decided that he would never lose his leaves again.

Park Monceau. Oriental plane tree

The history of the park continues. Surrounded by ancient aristocratic buildings, Parc Monceau bears witness to a distant past, full of important events, palace intrigues and bloody dramas. And a living person is living proof of this. The nine entrances to Parc Monceau are guarded by a fifth-generation watchman who lives in the rotunda in the former apartment of the citizen Egalite.

Photo: Tatiana Chechevatova