The Jardin Atlantique is a public park and garden located in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, on the roof that covers the tracks and platforms of the Gare Montparnasse railway station. It has an area of 3.4 hectares. It was created by the landscape architects Brun, Penna and Schnitzler, and opened in 1994. [1]
The garden is placed atop the large roof, or dalle, that covers the tracks and platforms of the Gare Monparnasse, supported by twelve pillars, and seventeen meters above the street level. Large ventilator shafts for the station are placed around the garden, and the announcement of the trains departing can be heard in the garden. Cubes of stone filled with earth contain five hundred trees. The garden is surrounded by office buildings and by a line of tennis courts on the west side. It is also the site of a small museum honoring Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque, commander of the French armored division which entered Paris first during the liberation of the city from the Germans in August 1944.
The plan of the garden is inspired the historical role of the Gare Montparnasse as the train station that connected Paris to Brittany and the Atlantic Ocean. One theme is that of a ship; the lampposts resemble the masts of sailing ships, and there are two elevated walkways on either side of the garden which resemble the bridges of ships. The visitor to the garden is supposed to feel like a passenger on a cruise ship surrounded by a circle of office buildings.
In the center of the garden, surrounded by a lawn, is a small square called the Isle of the Hesperides, named for the legendary islands believed by the Ancient Greeks to be to the west of the Pillars of Hercules. In the "island" is a fountain, called the Fontaine des Hesperides, made by the sculptor Jean-Max Llorca, composed of several gigantic meteorogical instruments for measuring the rain, temperature, wind and atmospheric pressure, surrounded by jets of water.
On the east side of the garden are a series of small thematic gardens, with different types of vegetation:
The large number of pine trees in the garden are also supposed to evoke the Atlantic coast of Brittany.
The east side of the garden also has two pavillons, where visitors can climb to the roof and look over the garden.
Montparnasse is an area in the south of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail. Montparnasse has been part of Paris since 1669.
The Jardin des plantes, also known as the Jardin des plantes de Paris when distinguished from other jardins des plantes in other cities, is the main botanical garden in France. The term Jardin des plantes is the official name in the present day, but it is in fact an elliptical form of Jardin royal des plantes médicinales, which is related to the original purpose of the garden back in the 17th century.
The Gare d'Austerlitz, officially Paris-Austerlitz, is one of the six large Paris rail termini. The station is located on the left bank of the Seine in the southeastern part of the city, in the 13th arrondissement. It is the start of the Paris–Bordeaux railway; the line to Toulouse is connected to this line. In 1997, the Ministry of Culture designated the Gare d'Austerlitz a historical monument; it became the fifth large railway station in Paris to receive such a label, as currently only Montparnasse has not been attributed it.
Montparnasse–Bienvenüe is a station of the Paris Métro which is a transfer point between Line 4, Line 6, Line 12 and Line 13. The fourth busiest station on the Métro system as of 2019 with 29.9 million riders, it is located in Montparnasse at the intersection of the 6th, 14th and 15th arrondissements.
The French National Museum of Natural History, known in French as the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle, is the national natural history museum of France and a grand établissement of higher education part of Sorbonne Universities. The main museum, with four galleries, is located in Paris, France, within the Jardin des Plantes on the left bank of the River Seine. It was formally founded in 1793 during the French Revolution, but was begun even earlier in 1635 as the royal garden of medicinal plants. The museum now has 14 sites throughout France.
The Jardin du Luxembourg, known in English as the Luxembourg Garden, colloquially referred to as the Jardin du Sénat, is located in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, France. Creation of the garden began in 1612 when Marie de' Medici, the widow of King Henry IV, constructed the Luxembourg Palace as her new residence. The garden today is owned by the French Senate, which meets in the Palace. It covers 23 hectares and is known for its lawns, tree-lined promenades, tennis courts, flowerbeds, model sailboats on its octagonal Grand Bassin, as well as picturesque Medici Fountain, built in 1620. The name Luxembourg comes from the Latin Mons Lucotitius, the name of the hill where the garden is located.
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The Parc des Buttes Chaumont is a public park situated in northeastern Paris, France, in the 19th arrondissement. Occupying 24.7 hectares, it is the fifth-largest park in Paris, after the Bois de Vincennes, Bois de Boulogne, Parc de la Villette and Tuileries Garden.
Parc Monceau is a public park situated in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, France, at the junction of Boulevard de Courcelles, Rue de Prony and Rue Georges Berger. At the main entrance is a rotunda. The park covers an area of 8.2 hectares.
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Auguste-Louis-Marie Jenks Ottin (1811–1890) was a French academic sculptor and recipient of the decoration of the Legion of Honor.
The Gardens of Versailles occupy part of what was once the Domaine royal de Versailles, the royal demesne of the château of Versailles. Situated to the west of the palace, the gardens cover some 800 hectares of land, much of which is landscaped in the classic French formal garden style perfected here by André Le Nôtre. Beyond the surrounding belt of woodland, the gardens are bordered by the urban areas of Versailles to the east and Le Chesnay to the north-east, by the National Arboretum de Chèvreloup to the north, the Versailles plain to the west, and by the Satory Forest to the south.
The French formal garden, also called the jardin à la française, is a style of garden based on symmetry and the principle of imposing order on nature. Its epitome is generally considered to be the Gardens of Versailles designed during the 17th century by the landscape architect André Le Nôtre for Louis XIV and widely copied by other European courts.
Hercules the Archer is a sculpture by Antoine Bourdelle, originally made in 1909, which now exists in many versions. It was a commission of the financier and philanthropist Gabriel Thomas, as a single copy in gilt-bronze in April 1909; Bourdelle worked on the sculpture in the summer of 1909. It was cast by Eugène Rudier, and it was exhibited at the National Society of Fine Arts in 1910, and much appreciated. The dimensions were 2.50 m × 2.40 m.
The Gare des Brotteaux is an old railway station located in the Brotteaux quarter, in the 6th arrondissement of Lyon.
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 (1987–1991) and Parc André Citroën (1992).
Parc Georges-Brassens is a public park located in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, between rue des Morillons and rue de Périchaux. Opened in 1984, it occupies 7.74 hectares on the site of a former fish market, horse market and slaughterhouse, and preserves some of the old market structures. It is named for the French popular singer Georges Brassens (1921–1981) who lived in the neighborhood of the park at 9 impasse Florimont and 42 rue Santos Dumont. The nearest metro stations to the park are Convention and Porte-de-Vanves.
The Parc de la Butte-du-Chapeau-Rouge formerly known as the Square de la Butte-du-Chapeau-Rouge, is a public park in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, which was created in 1939. It is an example of 1930s modernist park design, and contains a fountain and works of sculpture from the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (1937) held at the Trocadéro.
The Parc floral de Paris is a public park and botanical garden located within the Bois de Vincennes in the 12th arrondissement of Paris. Created in 1969, the park remains the legacy of the international horticultural exposition, which was organised under the auspices of the International Association of Horticultural Producers (AIPH) and recognised by the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE). It is one of four botanical gardens in Paris, and is the site of major annual flower shows. The nearest metro station to the park is Chateau-de-Vincennes.
The Jardin du Bassin de l'Arsenal is a public park in the 12th arrondissement of Paris, located on the east bank of the Canal Saint-Martin between the Place de la Bastille and the Seine. It was created in 1983. The access to the park is from boulevard de la Bastille. The nearest metro station is Bastille.