The Albert Kahn Gardens are part of the museum of the same name, dedicated to the conservation and promotion of the work of the philanthropist, banker and humanist Albert Kahn (1860-1940).
The son of Louis Kahn, a Jewish cattle dealer from Alsace, Albert (real name Abraham) Kahn loses his mother in 1870, the year Alsace-Lorraine is annexed by the German Empire. Like many Alsatians, Louis Kahn does not choose to live in France and thus became German – and so do his children. After attending the village’s Jewish school, Abraham-Albert obtains an emigration permit from Germany to France and arrives in Paris at the age of 16, where he works for a tailor and clothing manufacturer before joining the bank of brothers Edmond and Charles Goudchaux in 1878.
While earning his living, Albert Kahn resumes his interrupted schooling and then his higher education. He receives his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1881 but fails his Bachelor of Science degree. He nevertheless earns his law degree in 1884. A shrewd speculative financier, he makes his fortune in the mining business and opens his own bank in 1898. On June 30, 1885, he is declared French. His financial investments are focused on the Far East, particularly Japan, where he establishes close contacts with the imperial family.
Located in Boulogne-Billancourt, the Albert Kahn Museum houses today a collection called the “Archives of the Planet,” which includes some 72,000 photographs and around 100 hours of film brought back from some 60 countries between 1909 and 1931.
The museum also houses the gardens created by Albert Kahn himself, beginning in 1895. A fervent believer in universal peace, he creates a series of landscaped scenes inspired by different countries over a period of nearly 30 years and covering more than 4 hectares, which together form a scenic garden.
Albert Kahn’s gardens are perfectly in line with the landscape design trend of the time. Edmond de Rothschild creates a Japanese garden in the grounds of his Château de Boulogne, and the president of the Société Régionale d’Horticulture – to which Kahn belongs—creates an orchard-rose garden, a marsh, a winter garden, and a coniferous forest.
The Albert-Kahn gardens are enhanced by real estate elements – the French garden’s greenhouse and its winter garden, Japanese pavilions, and bridges – and by furniture elements – Japanese stone and metal lanterns, and contemporary sculptures – which are now an integral part of the museum’s collections.
The gardens are places of sociability, sharing, and influence, to which Albert Kahn invites prominent figures to introduce them to his humanist ideas.
The Japanese village is created in 1897, upon returning from Albert Kahn’s second trip to Japan. From his 1897 trip to Japan, Albert Kahn brings back two houses, as well as the gates, and a tea pavilion inaugurated in 1966 by the Society of Tea Masters of the Urasenke School of Tea Ceremony.
The contemporary Japanese garden, which dates from 1909 but is rebuilt after deterioration, features two wooden bridges and a mountain covered in azaleas that evokes Mount Fuji.
The contemporary watercourse evokes the life and work of Albert Kahn, from birth (a cone of pebbles) to death (a spiral).
The French garden, which adopts the geometric vocabulary of 17th-century classical gardens, is created in 1895 and includes symmetrical flowerbeds arranged in front of a conservatory greenhouse and an ornamental orchard, where fruit trees flourish.
The English garden, dating from 1895, features garden features (a cottage, a rockery bridge) arranged around the perimeter of a vast rolling lawn.
The Vosges forest, created on plots acquired between 1897 and 1918, covers 3,000 square meters and reminds the banker of the landscapes of his childhood.
The Blue Forest consists of Atlas cedars and Colorado spruces.
The Golden Forest and its meadow of tall grasses interspersed with perennial flowers are planted with birch trees.
The singularity of Albert Kahn’s work and his eponymous museum lies in the complementary nature of the image collection and plant collection. The Albert Kahn Gardens are an exceptional testament to horticultural art at the turn of the 20th century, as well as to the incredible openness of this German-turned-French banker-philanthropist to the world.
After the bankruptcy of the Kahn bank in 1932 following the 1929 crisis, Albert Kahn’s property is seized in 1933 and acquired in 1936 by the Prefecture of the Seine and then in 1968 by the newly created Hauts-de-Seine department. The establishment becomes a museum in 1986, and its gardens offer visitors a marvelous botanical world tour.
November 28, 2025
