Paris for Dreamers by Katrina Lawrence

Author:Katrina Lawrence [Lawrence, Katrina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Whimsical Walks Through the City of Light&#x2019, s Delights
ISBN: 9780646800660
Publisher: Paris for Dreamers
Published: 2019-06-16T04:00:00+00:00

Itinerary

• Jardin du Luxembourg 75006: opens between 07.30-08.15 and closes between 16.30-21.30 depending on time of year

• La Terrasse de Madame: from 08.00 until just before park’s closing

• Musée du Luxembourg: 19 Rue Vaugirard 75006; 10.30-19.00 (Saturday-Thursday), 10.30-22.00 (Friday); closed 25 December

• Angelina: 19 Rue de Vaugirard 75006; 10.30-19.00

If you feel like, when in Paris, pondering the point of being, you don’t necessarily need to get all angsty and existential over black coffee in a Left Bank café — you should simply take yourself to the Jardin du Luxembourg for the day. If ever a garden served as a metaphor for life, with all its twists and turns, light and shade, order and chaos, this would be it. Give yourself over to its winding gravel allées that go nowhere and everywhere, listen to the whispered stories of the statues, and observe Parisians of all ages at play. By the time you exit, you’ll have formulated an enlightened theory of living. Call it being and everythingness.

Clutching the day’s newspapers and a bag of croissants — and with your latest favourite book tucked into your tote — enter the gardens through the Porte Odéon gate on Rue de Vaugirard, past the ornamental grilles that encircle this 23-hectare park. Walk straight ahead, the immaculate emerald lawn (grass really is greener in Paris) on one side, the majestic Palais du Luxembourg on the other. Soon you’ll come to, on your left, an elongated pond bordered with plane trees that are looped together with ribbons of ivy. This fairytale-tunnel of an enchanted forest is the Medici Fountain. Claim one of the scattered green-metal chairs, and work your way through your papers and pastries. Or just be in the moment. The branches weave overhead into a leafy canopy, reflected in the mirror-esque water below. It’s all surprisingly meditative and tranquil, despite the drama of the sculptures at the fountain’s foot: a jealous Polyphemus angrily looming over the sea nymph Galatea in the arms of Acis.

The fountain was originally a grotto, commissioned by the homesick Florentine Marie de Medici. She had come to Paris in 1600 to wed King Henri IV, whose marriage offer was a way to repay a debt owed to Marie’s wealthy father, Francesco I, the super-wealthy Grand Duke of Tuscany. Ten years later, and the day after she was finally crowned queen, Henri was fatally stabbed by an assassin. Marie, now regent for her young son — Louis XIII — could finally revel in independence and power. To escape the politics of the Louvre, the royal palace at the time, she bought some land on the Left Bank, just beyond the then city walls, from a certain Duc François de Luxembourg. While living in his former mansion (now the Petit Luxembourg), she watched her dream future palace materialise next door. She had requested something close in style to the Palazzo Pitti, where she had so happily grown up, complete with a park inspired by the terraces and parterres of the Boboli Gardens.

The Luxembourg

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