The Jardin du Luxembourg, or the Luxembourg Garden, located in the 6th
arrondissement of Paris, was created beginning in 1612 by Marie de' Medici,
the widow of King Henry IV of France, for a new residence she constructed, the
Luxembourg Palace. The garden today is owned by the French Senate, which meets
in the Palace.which covers 23 hectares, is known for its lawns, tree-lined
promenades, flowerbeds, the model sailboats on its circular basin, and for
the picturesque Medici Fountain, built in 1620.
History In 1611, Marie de' Medici, the widow of
Henry IV and the regent for the King Louis XIII decided to build a palace in
imitation of the Pitti Palace in her native Florence. She purchased the hotel
du Luxembourg and began construction of the new palace. She commissioned Salomon
de Brosse to build the palace and a fountain, which still exists. In 1612
she planted 2,000 elm trees, and directed a series of gardeners, most
notably Tommaso Francini, to build a park in the style she had known as a
child in Florence. Francini planned two terraces with balustrades and parterres
laid out along the axis of the chateau, aligned around a circular basin. He also
built the Medici Fountain to the east of the palace as a nympheum, an artificial
grotto and fountain, without its present pond and statuary. The original garden
was just eight hectares in size. In 1630 she bought additional land and
enlarged the garden to thirty hectares, and entrusted the work to Jacques
Boyceau de la Barauderie, the indendant of the royal gardens of Tuileries and
the early garden of Versailles. He was one of the early theorists of the new
and more formal garden à la française, and he laid out a series of squares
along an east-west alley closed at the east end by the Medici Fountain, and a
rectangle of parterres with broderies of flowers and hedges in front of the
palace. In the center he placed an octagonal basin with a fountain, with a
perspective toward what is now the Paris observatory.
Later monarchs largely neglected the garden. In 1780, the Comte de Provence,
the future Louis XVIII, sold the eastern part of the garden for real estate
development. Following the French Revolution, however, the leaders of the
French Directory expanded the garden to forty hectares by confiscating the land
of the neighboring religious order of the Carthusian monks. The architect Jean
Chalgrin, the architect of the Arc de Triomphe, took on the task of restoring
the garden. He remade the Medici Fountain and laid out a long perspective
from the palace to the observatory. He preserved the famous pepiniere, or
nursery garden of the Carthusian order, and the old vineyards, and kept the
garden in a formal French style. During and after the July Monarchy of
1848, the park became the home of a large population of statues; first the
Queens and famous women of France, lined along the terraces; then, in 1880s and
1890s, monuments to writers and artists, a small-scale model by Bartholdi of his
Statue of Liberty and one modern sculpture by Zadkine.
In 1865, during the reconstruction of Paris by Louis Napoleon, the rue de
l'Abbé de l'Épée, was extended into the park, cutting off about seven hectares,
including a large part of the old nursery garden. The building of new
streets next to the park also required moving and rebuilding the Medici
Fountain to its present location. The long basin of the fountain was added at
this time, along with the statues at the foot of the fountain.
During this reconstruction, the director of parks and promenades of Paris,
Gabriel Davioud, built new ornamental gates and fences around the park, and
polychrome brick garden houses. He also transformed what remained of the old
Chartreux nursery garden, at the south end of the park, into an English garden
with winding paths, and planted a fruit garden in the southwest corner. He kept
the regular geometric pattern of the paths and alleys, but did create one
diagonal alley near the Medici fountain which opened a view of the Pantheon.
The garden in the late nineteenth century contained a marionette theater,
a music kiosk, greenhouses, an apiary or bee-house; an orangerie also used for
displaying sculpture and modern art; a rose garden, the fruit orchard, and
about seventy works of sculpture. Features
The garden is largely devoted to a green parterre of gravel and lawn populated
with statues and centred on a large octagonal basin of water, with a central
jet of water; in it children sail model boats. The garden is famed for its calm
atmosphere. Surrounding the bassin on the raised balustraded terraces are a
series of statues of former French queens, saints and copies after the
Antique. In the southwest corner, there is an orchard of apple and pear trees
and the théâtre des marionnettes. The gardens include a large fenced-in
playground for young children and their parents and a vintage carousel. In
addition, free musical performances are presented in a gazebo on the grounds and
there is a small cafe restaurant nearby, under the trees, with both indoor and
outdoor seating from which many people enjoy the music over a glass of wine.
The orangerie displays art, photography and sculptures.
The École nationale supérieure des Mines de Paris and the Odéon theatre stand
next to the Luxembourg Garden. The central axis of the garden is
extended, beyond its wrought iron grill and gates opening to rue Auguste Comte,
by the central esplanade of the rue de l'Observatoire, officially the Jardin
Marco Polo, where sculptures of the four Times of Day alternate with columns and
culminate at the southern end with the 1874 "Fountain of the Observatory", also
known as the "Fontaine des Quatre-Parties-du-Monde" or the
"Carpeaux Fountain", for its sculptures by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux. It was
installed as part of the development of the avenue de l'Observatoire by Gabriel
Davioud in 1867. The bronze fountain represents the work
of four sculptors: Louis Vuillemot carved the garlands and festoons around
the pedestal, Pierre Legrain carved the armillary with interior globe and zodiac
band; the animalier Emmanuel Fremiet designed the eight horses, marine
turtles and spouting fish. Most importantly Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux
sculpted the four nude women supporting the globe, representing the Four
Continents of classical iconography. Open hours for the Luxembourg Garden
depend on the month: opening between 7:30 and 8:15 am; closing at dusk
between 4:45 and 9:45 pm. Statuary
The garden contains just over a hundred statues, monuments, and fountains,
scattered throughout the grounds. Surrounding the central green space are
twenty figures of French queens and illustrious women standing on pedestals.
They were commissioned by Louis-Philippe in 1848 and include: Saint Bathild,
Bertha of Burgundy, Matilda, Duchess of Normandy, Saint Genevieve, Mary I of
Scotland, Jeanne III of Navarre, Clémence Isaure, Anne Marie Louise of
Orléans, Louise of Savoy, Margaret of Anjou, Laure de Noves, Marie de Medici,
Marguerite of Navarre, Valentina Visconti, Anne of France, Blanche of
Castile, Anne of Austria, Anne of Brittany, Margaret of Provence, Saint
Clotilde. Other sculptured work includes:
Pierre Guillaume Frédéric le Play, by André Joseph Allar, 1906
Statue of Liberty, first model, by Frédéric Bartholdi, 1870
La Bocca della Verità, by Jules Blanchard
Ludwig van Beethoven, by Antoine Bourdelle, placed here 1978
Monument to Henri Murger, by Théophile-Henri Bouillon, 1895
multiple animal sculptures by Auguste Cain
Le Triomphe de Silène, 1885, Hommage to Delacroix, 1890, and Monument to Auguste
Scheurer-Kestner, 1908, both by Jules Dalou
Monument to Jean-Antoine Watteau, by Henri Désiré Gauquié, 1896
Narcissus, 1869, and Arion assis sur un dauphin, 1870, both by Ernest-Eugène
Hiolle Hippomenes by Jean Antoine Injalbert
Bust of Charles Baudelaire, by Pierre Félix Masseau
Polyphemus Surprising Acis and Galatea, the Fontaine Médicis, by Auguste Ottin,
1866 Clémence Isaure by Antoine-Augustin
Préault Theseus and the Minotaur, by
Etienne-Jules Ramey, 1826 Hercules Diverting the River Alpheus,
1900, and L'Effort, 1902, both by Pierre Roche
Paul Verlaine, by Rodo, 1911 Monument to Édouard Branly, by Charles
Marie Louis Joseph Sarrabezolles Georges Sand, by François-Léon Sicard,
1904 Jules Massenet, by Raoul Verlet, 1926
Marshal Ney, by François Rude and Alphonse de Gisors, 1853.
Medici Fountain The Medici Fountain was built in 1630 by
Marie de' Medici, the widow of King Henry IV of France and regent of King
Louis XIII of France. It was designed by Tommaso Francini, a Florentine fountain
maker and hydraulic engineer who was brought from Florence to France by King
Henry IV. It was in the form of a grotto, a popular feature of the Italian
Renaissance garden. It fell into ruins during the 18th century, but in 1811, at
the command of Napoleon Bonaparte, the fountain was restored by Jean Chalgrin,
the architect of the Arc de Triomphe. In 1864-66, the fountain was moved to its
present location, centered on the east front of the Palais du Luxembourg. The
long basin of water was built and flanked by plane trees, and the
sculptures of the giant Polyphemus surprising the lovers Acis and Galatea,
by French classical sculptor Auguste Ottin, were added to the grotto's
rockwork. Hidden behind the Medici Fountain is the
Fontaine de Léda,, a wall fountain built during the time of Napoleon Bonaparte at
the corner of the Rue du Regard and Rue de Vaugirard, with a bas-relief
sculpture depicting the legend of Leda and the Swan by Achille Valois. When the
original site was destroyed during the prolongation of the Rue de Rennes in
1856 by Louis Napoleon, the fountain was preserved and moved in 1866 to the
Luxembourg Gardens and attached to the back of the Medici Fountain.
Jardin du Luxembourg in popular culture The gardens are featured prominently in
Victor Hugo's novel Les Misérables. It is here that the principal love story of
the novel unfolds, as the characters Marius Pontmercy and Cosette first meet.
Henry James also uses the gardens, in The Ambassadors, as the place where his
character Lambert Strether has an epiphany about his identity. The final
scene of William Faulkner's novel Sanctuary is set in the gardens. Patrick
Modiano heard the news he had won the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature via a
mobile phone call from his daughter while walking through Paris, "just next
to the Jardin du Luxembourg". Non-literary references include as the
setting for a few episodes of French in Action, the cover of Tame Impala's 2012
album Lonerism, the title of a song by the band The Ghost of a Saber Tooth
Tiger and the gardens and palace being added as a mission in the video game
Assassin's Creed Unity. Images
See also List of parks and gardens in Paris
References Bibliography
André Arnold-Peltier and Vassili Karist, Le Jardin du Luxembourg / The Luxembourg
gardens, Éditions Pippa, collection Itinérances
Paris et ses fontaines, de la Renaissance à nos jours, texts assembled
by Dominque Massounie, Pauline-Prevost-Marcilhacy and Daniel
Rabreau, Délegation a l'action artistique de la Ville de Paris. from
the Collection Paris et son Patrimoine, directed by Beatrice de Andia. Paris,
1995. Dominique Jarrassé, Grammaire des
Jardins Parisiens, Parigramme, Paris, 2007.
External links The Luxembourg Gardens page at the
Project for Public Spaces The Jardin du Luxembourg - Current and
old photographs of the garden, statues, fountains
Detailed map with sculptures Info and Jardin du Luxembourg Walk
The Luxembourg Gardens at Twilight - One of a series of paintings featuring the
gardens by American artist John Singer Sargent
Webpages about the Garden