Luxembourg garden

If you believe statistics, the Jardin du Luxembourg is the most visited private garden in the world.

It belongs to the French Senate, but under the vigilant eyes of their kepied guards, is open to the public from dusk till dawn. Located south of Saint-Germain-de-prés, easily accessible walking through the place Saint Sulpice, or past the Odéon theater, or from the boulevard Saint Michel (RER station Luxembourg), it's a haven of oxygen, calm and beauty.

In the early morning hours joggers circle the 25 hectares garden inside its iron grilled enclosure; tennis players people the courts in singles or doubles; Tai-chi groups perform their Zen antics under the shade of trees; later in the day aficionados of boules or petanque gather around their iron balls in sand-filled rectangular boxes near the entrance at the rue Guynemere; chess games have become so popular near the Orangerie that the Senate put up chess tables.

Literati and celebrities have coffee or drinks at the two buvettes; ice-cream can be bought in little wooden kiosks or at the Saint Michel entrance, at a stand. Children play with toy sailboats in the basin in front of the Senate, or have the choice of two playgrounds: one by the Orangerie, the other further south (for a small fee), with lots of entertaining and amusing gadgets. A famous manège - a merry-go-round - is right next to a puppet theater, and live ponies take kids on short but thrilling rides.

At the southern and western part, where luscious old plantain and chestnut trees spread shade over green lawns and colorful flowerbeds, is the favorite rest for lovers and world weary citizen. The octagonal central basin with a single fountain spout, is surrounded by a sort of parapet; if you walk from one side to the other on the height, you will meet the queens of France and other kingdoms linked to France.

Notice that French history goes a long way, that women played a formidable role in politics. Beginning in the west with Saint Clotilde (-545), Marguerite de Provence (1219-1295), Anne de Bretagne (1477-1514), Anne d'Autriche (1601-1666), Blanche de Castille (-1252), Anne de Beaujeu (1460-1522), Valentine de Milan, Duchesse d'Orleans (1370-1408), Marguerite d'Angouleme (1492-1549), and in the southwestern corner Marie de Medicis in all her splendor; to the east, amongst the better known Marie Stuart (1542-1587), and Saint Genevieve, patroness of Paris (423-512).

The story of this park, like so many parks and gardens of France, is colorful enough. Marie de Medicis, widow of Henri IV and queen of France, dreamed of a Florentine pleasure garden in Paris. In 1611, a year after her husband's death, she buys a piece of land in what's then the faubourg of Paris.

The Romans had camped here 13 centuries before, calling it Leucotitus. Marie de Medicis acquires in 1612 the hotel particulier of the Duc François de Luxembourg, her neighbor - hence the name. She builds herself a palace whose walls Rubens is commissioned to decorate with large paintings (today they're in the Louvre).

She leads a life of voluptuousness in a garden devoted to gay entertainment. What Disneyland is today for the French a taste of America, the Luxembourg was then a slice of Florentine Italy. The party, however, didn't last long, and a political/family feud drives the queen out of Paris 5 years later. During the Revolution the palace is used as a prison. In the XIX century it becomes a popular garden of Parisians.

The sculptures, wealth of trees and flowers, are an inspiration to writers. If anything remains as a perennial monument to our short lives, it's the bijoux of equivocal optical illusion of the fontaine de Medicis, designed by Chalgrin with its riveting basin created by Alphonse Gigors.

text copyright 2001 Einar Moos Luco, the history of the garden from its beginning...- by Einar Moos