Luxembourg gardens

The gardens of Luxembourg (in French, Jardin du Luxembourg), familiarly nicknamed Luco, are a Parisian public park of 22.45 ha, located in the Sixth District. The Luxembourg is the garden of the French Senate, whose seat is in the palace of Luxembourg.

It is a private park open to the public. It underwent numerous changes throughout its history, and the current design corresponds for the most part to the works built by the architect Jean-François-Thérèse Chalgrin during the First French Empire. It was later cut by the peripheral urbanization works of Baron Haussmann.

The gardens include several fenced play areas, very popular with the little ones and their parents, and nearby there is a popular puppet theater and a merry-go-round. Children can ride on pony and donkey and enjoy the rides they can take with them. In addition, there are free musical performances at a kiosk and there is a restaurant nearby, under shady trees, with tables both inside and outside. outdoors, to listen to the music while enjoying a glass of wine. There is another cafeteria-restaurant in another part of the garden.

The garden is pleasant for its tranquility. Children play in the small pond having fun and enjoying this one can rent small sailboats. The garden contains many statues and sculptures to admire. Surrounding the central flower beds, there are a number of ancient statues of French queens.1

The garden has many fun and educational activities. There are classes of initiation to beekeeping, with several hives, and there is a free horticulture school. This has an orchard of more than 1000 fruit trees that houses a valuable collection of ancient species of apple and pear trees.2 The classes of both schools are given in the Pavilion Davioud, a small building erected in 1867 to house a cafe-restaurant. The garden has tennis courts, basketball courts and palm courts, and martial arts are practiced in authorized areas.

The current building of the Orangerie was built in 1839 to replace previous buildings. It houses 180 species of trees in pots such as citrus fruits, date palms, oleanders and pomegranates, which adorn the garden in spring. It has bigarade orange trees from 250 to 300 years old.3

The current greenhouses were created at the end of the 18th century, on the site of an earlier greenhouse that belonged to a Carthusian convent. There flowers are grown that serve for the flowerbeds of the garden and for the decoration of the Senate. Account since 1838 with a collection of more than 10,000 orchids.4

The National Higher School of Mines in Paris and the Odeon Theater are next to the Luxembourg Gardens.

The park's opening hours depend on the sunlight schedules and vary according to the season: it opens between 7:30 and 8:15 in the morning, while it closes between 4:30 and 9:00: 30 in the afternoon.

History

Queen regent of France, Maria de Medici, thanks to the immense wealth of his family, owner of a bank with branches throughout Europe, decided to expand the small garden of the palace buying little by little the adjacent lands between 1614 and 1631. Apenas had 300 m wide in front of the palace because there was a Carthusian convent (which was not easy to evict) that prevented the development of a garden perspective on the axis of the palace. The garden was then extended to the side of the palace and extended about a kilometer to the west.6 Jacques Boyceau, a famous landscaper of the time, was responsible for the first plantations in 1614, as well as designing fountains, walks and flowerbeds . Maria de 'Medici had planned the creation of numerous fountains and ponds that could not be built, except for the current fountain of Maria Medici, then called "grotto of Luxembourg". It is the only remaining monument of the initial garden, although it did not function as a fountain. The current pond that extends it was added in 1862 by the architect Alphonse de Gisors.

In 1782 the most western part was sold to defray the rehabilitation works of the palace undertaken by the Count of Provence, brother of King Louis XVI. The gardens reached their maximum dimension only in 1792, after the closing of the convent that allowed the extension of the gardens to the south, in front of the facade of the palace.

Baron Haussmann, who remodeled the entire city by building large avenues and destroying entire neighborhoods, amputated the park at several points to make room for its boulevards, despite protests from neighbors (the garden was already open to the public from time to time) .

The garden of Luxembourg appears in the famous novel by the Parisian writer Victor Hugo. In these gardens Marius meets Jean Valjean and his daughter, Cosette, and falls in love with her.