This 865 hectare/2,135 acre park Bois de Boulogne, crisscrossed by footpaths and bridle-paths but also traversed by broad motor roads, lies on the western boundary of Paris, between the Boulevard Périphérique on the east and the Seine on the west. It takes its name from the old pilgrimage church of Notre-Dame de Boulogne-le- Petit, built in the 14th C by pilgrims returning from a pilgrimage to Notre-Dame de Boulogne-sur-Mer.
In the 15th C a small settlement called Boulogne grew up on the site, and the name was subsequently applied also to the wood of holm oaks which surrounded it. For long a royal hunting ground and also the haunt of bandits and other undesirables, it was surrounded in the 16th C, in the reign of Henri II, by a wall with eight gates. Louis XIV's minister Colbert, on the king's orders, laid it out as a park with paths converging in the form of a star and threw it open to the public.
During the Regency (early 18th C) and again from the mid 19th C onwards the park became the resort of the fashionable world - in the latter case mainly because of the opening of racecourses at Longchamp and Auteuil and the new landscaping of the park by Baron Haussmann, Prefect of the Seine, after Napoleon III presented it to the city.
Nowadays the Bois de Boulogne is a popular recreation area, drawing large numbers of people to walk in the park, picnic on the grass, row on the lake or simply do nothing. During the day the park is frequented by joggers, cyclists, riders, dog-owners and the indefatigable boule players. After dark there is a different public with different interests, and prostitution is well established here.
On the west side of the Lac Supérieur in Paris' Bois de Boulogne is the Auteuil racecourse, opened in 1850. The main stand is on the side of a low hill, the Butte Mortemart, formed from soil excavated from the two lakes. It has steeplechasing only.
The Lac Inférieur (Lower Lake) in Paris' Bois de Boulogne is over 1,000m/1,100yds long and 1.5m/5ft deep. Visitors who are not content merely to walk round the lake can take a ferry from the west side to the two islands, on one of which is a cafe-restaurant, or can hire a rowing boat at the north end of the lake. There is also a footpath round the Lac Supérieur (Upper Lake), which is 400m/400yds long and, like the Lower Lake, is man made.
In the Pré Catelan (named after a troubadour, Armand Catelan, who was murdered here around 1300), a small enclosed garden in the center of the Bois de Boulogne, are two small châteaux and a majestic 200-year-old copper beech. The Jardin Shakespeare, laid out in 1953, contains specimens of all the plants mentioned in Shakespeare's plays.
Tips: Conducted visits at 11a.m. and 1, 3 and 4:30p.m. Admission cost to the Shakespeare garden.
The Jardin d'Acclimatation in Paris' Bois de Boulogne, now a children's amusement park, was originally a zoo (in which some episodes of Proust's "A la Recherche du Temps Perdu" are set). Among the attractions for young visitors are animal enclosures, donkey rides, a miniature railroad, a traffic training circuit, a karting track, a skateboarding rink, fair booths, a children's museum and a theater.
Address: Jardin D'Acclimatation, Bois de Boulogne, F-75116 Paris, France
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