Description
The Jardin des Plantes is the main botanical garden in France, on the Left Bank of the Seine in the 5th arrondissement: 28 hectares of flower beds, greenhouses, centuries-old trees and natural history galleries, with a small zoo thrown in.
The Grande Galerie de l'Évolution fills a huge iron-and-glass hall with a parade of stuffed animals, including Louis XV's own rhinoceros. The Winter Garden greenhouse hides a 15-meter waterfall, and the Ménagerie, one of the oldest zoos still open, keeps smaller animals.
The trees are part of the show. A false acacia brought from America in 1601 is said to be the oldest tree in Paris, and a cedar of Lebanon planted in 1734 marks the start of the labyrinth, a small hill crowned by the Gloriette de Buffon, a cast-iron pavilion from 1787 and the oldest metal structure in Paris.
Founded by Louis XIII in 1635 as a royal garden of medicinal plants, it later became a center of science: Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity in one of its laboratories in 1896.
The Grande Galerie de l'Évolution fills a huge iron-and-glass hall with a parade of stuffed animals, including Louis XV's own rhinoceros. The Winter Garden greenhouse hides a 15-meter waterfall, and the Ménagerie, one of the oldest zoos still open, keeps smaller animals.
The trees are part of the show. A false acacia brought from America in 1601 is said to be the oldest tree in Paris, and a cedar of Lebanon planted in 1734 marks the start of the labyrinth, a small hill crowned by the Gloriette de Buffon, a cast-iron pavilion from 1787 and the oldest metal structure in Paris.
Founded by Louis XIII in 1635 as a royal garden of medicinal plants, it later became a center of science: Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity in one of its laboratories in 1896.