Here is another very pretty park that we owe to Napoleon III and Georges-Eugène Haussmann.
The Montsouris park was named after the many rodents (“souris” meaning “mouse”) that had settled in the mills that lined long before the park was built the Bièvre river, now covered.
Haussmann decided to build the park in 1860 and Adolphe Alphand was in charge of its development. The inauguration took place in 1869.
The similarities between the Montsouris park and the Buttes-Chaumont park are striking: both designed by Adolphe Alphand, they are designed as English gardens, with lakes, islands and hills.
Built on old quarries (like the Buttes-Chaumont), the development of the park posed many difficulties because the place had been used to bury the 800 corpses that had been removed from the “Cimetière des Innocents”, located in the middle de Paris, when it closed definitively in 1786.
More than 1,400 trees are planted in this park which also offers sanctuary to forty species of wild ducks, geese, herons and other migratory birds.
The place is quite bucolic.
The Square Montsouris street is just as bucolic.
January 29, 2021
