from the terraces along the Place de la Concorde the eye takes in the Place and the Avenue of the Champs Élysées. The gardens of the Luxembourg,[1] planned by S. Debrosse (17th century) and situated in front of the palace occupied by the senate, are about the same size as those of the Tuileries; with less regularity of form they present greater variety of appearance. In the line of the main entrance extends the beautiful Observatory Walk, terminating in the monumental fountain mentioned above. Besides these gardens laid out in the French taste, with straight walks and regular beds, there are several in what the French designate the English style. The finest and most extensive of these, the Buttes-Chaumont Gardens, in the north-east of the city, occupy 57 acres of very irregular ground, which up to 1866 was occupied by plaster-quarries, limekilns and brickworks. The “buttes” or knolls are now covered with turf, flowers and shrubbery. Advantage has been taken of the varying relief of the site to form a fine lake and a cascade with picturesque rocks. The Montsouris Park, in the south of the city, 38 acres in extent, also consists of broken ground; in the middle stands the meteorological observatory, built after the model of the Tunisian palace of Bardo, and it also contains a monument in memory of the Flatters expedition to the Sahara in 1881. The small Monceau Park, in the aristocratic quarter to the north of the Boulevard Haussmann, is a portion of the old park belonging to King Louis Philippe, and contains monuments to Chopin, Gounod, Guy de Maupassant and others.
The Jardin des Plantes[1] (founded in the first half of the 17th century), about 58 acres in extent, combines both styles. Its museum of natural history (1793), with its zoological gardens, its hothouses and greenhouses, its nursery and naturalization gardens, its museums of zoology, anatomy, anthropology, botany, mineralogy and geology, its laboratories, and its courses of lectures by the most distinguished professors in all branches of natural science, make it an institution of universally acknowledged eminence.
Other open spaces worthy of mention are the Champs Élysées (west of the Place de la Concorde), begun at the end of the 17th century but only established in their present form since 1858; the Trocadéro Park, laid out for the exhibition of 1878, with its lakes, cascade and aquarium; the Champ de Mars (laid out about 1770 as a manœuvring ground for the École Militaire), containing the Eiffel Tower (q.v.); the gardens of the Palais Royal, surrounded by galleries; and the Ranelagh in Passy.
The Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes situated outside the fortifications are on a far larger scale than the parks within them. The Bois de Boulogne, commonly called the “Bois,” is reached by the wide avenue of the Champs Élysées as far as the Arc de Triomphe and thence by the avenue of the Bois de Boulogne or that of the Grande Armée. The first of these, with its side walks for foot passengers and equestrians, grass-plots, flower-beds and elegant buildings, affords a wide prospect over the Bois and the hills of St Cloud and Mont Valérien. The Bois de Boulogne covers an area of 2100 acres, is occupied by turf, clumps of trees, sheets of water or running streams. Here are the two race-courses of Longchamp (flat races) and Auteuil (steeplechases), the park of the small château of Bagatelle, 1777, the grounds of the Polo Club and the Racing Club and the gardens of the Acclimatization Society, which, with their menageries, conservatories and aquarium, are largely visited by pleasure-seekers. Trees for the public parks and squares are grown in the municipal nurseries situated on the south border of the Bois. On the east it is adjoined by the Park of La Muette, with the old royal château. The Bois de Vincennes (see Vincennes) is 2300 acres in area and is similarly adorned with streams, lakes and cascades.
Churches.—The most important church in Paris is the cathedral of Notre-Dame, founded in 1163, completed about 1240. Measuring 139 yds. in length and 52 yds. in breadth, the church consists of a choir and apse, a short transept, and a nave with double aisles which are continued round the choir and are flanked by square chapels added after the completion of the rest of the church. The central spire, 148 ft. in height, was erected in the course of a restoration carried out between 1846 and 1879 under the direction of Viollet le Duc. Two massive square towers crown the principal façade. Its three doors are decorated with fine early Gothic carving and surmounted by a row of figures representing twenty-eight kings of Israel and Judah. Above the central door is a rose window, above which is a third storey consisting of a graceful gallery of pointed arches supported on slender columns. The transept has two façades, also richly decorated with chiselled work and containing rose windows. Of the elaborate decoration of the interior all that is medieval is a part of the screen of the choir (the first half of the 14th century), with sculptures representing scenes from the life of Christ, and the stained glass of the rose windows (13th century). The woodwork in the choir (early 18th century), and a marble group called the “Vow of Louis XIII.” (17th century) by Couston and Coysevox, are other noticeable works of art. The church possesses the Crown of Thorns and a fragment of the Cross, which attract numerous pilgrims.
Paris is poor in Romanesque architecture, which is represented chiefly in the nave and transept of St Germain-des-Prés, the choir of which is Gothic in tendency. The church, which once belonged to the celebrated abbey of St Germain founded in the 6th century, contains fine modern frescoes by Hippolyte Flandrin. The Transition style is also exemplified in St Pierre-de-Montmartre (12th century). Besides the cathedral there are several churches of the Gothic period, the most important being St Julien-le-Pauvre, now serving as a Greek church, which is contemporary with Notre-Dame; St Germain-l’Auxerrois (13th to 16th centuries), whose projecting porch is a graceful work of 1435; St Séverin (mainly of the 13th and 16th centuries); St Gervais, largely in the Flamboyant Gothic style with an interesting façade by S. Debrosse in the classical manner; and St Merry (1520–1612), almost wholly Gothic in architecture. St Gervais, St Merry and St Germain all contain valuable works of art, the stained glass of the two former being especially noteworthy.
St Étienne-du-Mont combines the Gothic and Renaissance styles in its nave and transept, while its choir is of Gothic, its façade of pure Renaissance architecture. In the interior, one of the most beautiful in the city, there is a fine rood-loft (1600–1609) by Pierre Biard and a splendid collection of stained windows of the 16th and early 17th centuries; a chapel contains part of the sarcophagus of Ste Geneviève, which is the object of a pilgrimage. St Eustache (1532–c. 1650), though its construction displays many Gothic characteristics, belongs wholly, with the exception of a Classical façade of the 18th century, to the Renaissance period, being unique in this respect among the more important of French churches. The church contains the sarcophagus and statue (by A. Coysevox) of Colbert and the tombs of other eminent men.
Of churches in the Classical style the principal are St Sulpice (1655–1777), almost equalling Notre-Dame in dimensions and possessing a façade by J. N. Servandoni ranking among the finest of its period; St Roch (1653–1740), which contains numerous works of art of the 17th and 18th centuries; St Paul-St Louis (1627–1641); and the church (1645–1665) of the former nunnery of Val-de-Grace (now a military hospital and medical school), which has a dome built after the model of St Peter’s at Rome. All these churches are in the old city.
Of the churches of the 19th century, the most remarkable is that of the Sacré Coeur, an important resort of pilgrims, begun in 1876 and overlooking Paris from the heights of Montmartre. The Sacré Coeur is in the Romanesque style, but is surmounted by a Byzantine dome behind which rises a lofty belfry. The bell presented by the dioceses of Savoy and known as “la Savoyarde” weighs between 17 and 18 tons. Of the other modern churches the oldest is the Madeleine, built under Napoleon I. by Pierre Vignon on the foundations of a church of the 18th century and finished in 1842. It was intended by the emperor as a “temple of glory” and is built on the lines of a Roman temple with a fine colonnade surrounding it. The interior, consisting of a single nave bordered by chapels and roofed with cupolas, is decorated with sculptures and painting by eminent modern artists. Notre-Dame-de-Lorette (1823–1836) and St Vincent-de-Paul (1824–1844) are in the style of early Christian basilicas. Both contain good frescoes, the frieze of the nave in St Vincent-de-Paul being an elaborate work by Hippolyte Flandrin. Ste Clotilde, the most important representation of modern Gothic in Paris, dates from the middle of the century. St Augustin and La Trinité in the Renaissance style were both built between 1860 and 1870. With the exception of Ste Clotilde in the St Germain quarter and the Madeleine, the modern churches above mentioned are all in the northern quarters of Paris.
Civil Buildings.—The most important of the civil buildings of Paris is the palace of the Louvre (Lupara), the south front of which extends along the Seine for about half a mile. It owes its origin to Philip Augustus, who erected a huge keep defended by a rectangle of fortifications in what is now the south-west corner of the quadrangle, where its plan is traced on the pavement. The fortress was demolished by Francis I. and under that monarch and his successors Pierre Lescot built the portions of the wings to the south and west of the courtyard, which rank among the finest examples of Renaissance architecture. The rest
