page_title: History of parks and gardens of Paris
section_title: The Bois de Boulogne (1852–1858)
hierarchical_section_title: History of parks and gardens of Paris / Parks and gardens of Napoleon III (1852–1870) / The Bois de Boulogne (1852–1858)
caption_attribution_description: Grande cascade du bois de Boulogne
context_page_description: Paris today has more than 421 municipal parks and gardens, covering more than three thousand hectares and containing more than 250,000 trees. Two of Paris's oldest and most famous gardens are the Tuileries Garden, created in 1564 for the Tuileries Palace, and redone by André Le Nôtre in 1664; and the Luxembourg Garden, belonging to a château built for Marie de' Medici in 1612, which today houses the French Senate. The Jardin des Plantes was the first botanical garden in Paris, created in 1626 by Louis XIII's doctor Guy de La Brosse for the cultivation of medicinal plants. Between 1853 and 1870, the Emperor Napoleon III and the city's first director of parks and gardens, Jean-Charles Adolphe Alphand, created the Bois de Boulogne, the Bois de Vincennes, Parc Montsouris and the Parc des Buttes Chaumont, located at the four points of the compass around the city, as well as many smaller parks, squares and gardens in the neighborhoods of the city. One hundred sixty-six new parks have been created since 1977, most notably the Parc de la Villette and Parc André Citroën.
context_section_description: The Bois de Boulogne was a scrubby forest to the west of the city, where the German, Russian and British occupation armies had camped after Napoleon's defeat and had cut down most of the older trees.
  In 1852 Napoleon III had land transferred from the list of Imperial property to the city of Paris, and bought the plots of private land within the park. He had lived long years in exile in London, and had frequently visited London's Hyde Park, with its serpentine lake and winding paths. It became the model for his first major new park. Thousands of workers began digging artificial lakes and brought boulders from the Forest of Fontainebleau to build an artificial cascade. Belgrand, the hydraulic engineer, built a special conduit from the Ourq canal, dug artesian wells, and laid 66 kilometers of pipes to provide water for the future lakes, lawns and flowerbeds. Alphand laid out 95 kilometers of new roads, riding trails and paths winding through the park. The gardeners seeded 273 hectares of lawn and planted 420,000 trees.
  The park was also intended to provide recreation for the Parisians; besides the roads for carriages and paths for horses and walking, Davioud built twenty-four chalets and pavilions around the park, which served as restaurants, cafes, theaters, and places of entertainment. Twenty hectares were set aside for a garden and zoo, the Jardin d'Acclimatation. In 1857 one corner of the park became the site of the Hippodrome de Longchamp, the city's most important horse racing track. During the winter, the lake became a popular destination for ice-skating. From its opening, the park was full of Parisians of all classes.
caption: The artificial grand cascade and grotto of the Bois de Boulogne
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