Timeline

Key figures

Origin and history

The Jardin du Palais-Royal, located in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, is a green space of 20,850 m2 created in 1633 by Cardinal de Richelieu to adorn his palace. Designed by Pierre Desgotz, the king's gardener, he was bequeathed to Louis XIII before welcoming the royal family. The garden is restructured under Charles X, with the addition of galleries and driveways, and remains today an emblematic place of Parisian heritage.

The garden is surrounded by four arcade galleries: Montpensier (West), Beaujolais (North), Valois (East) and Jardin (South). It houses historical statues, including The Snake Charmer (1875) and The Pâtre and the Goat (circa 1830), as well as a small bronze cannon installed in 1786. The latter, initially operated by the sun to mark noon, is today pulled manually every Wednesday at 12pm, after periods of interruption and flight in 1998.

Among the remarkable elements are the Buren Columns (1986) in the courtyard of honour, a Wallace fountain, and a commemorative plaque paying tribute to the Czechoslovak volunteers of 1914. The garden, served by metro lines 1 and 7 (station Palais Royal - Musée du Louvre), combines history, art and memory, with alleys dedicated to Colette and Cocteau inaugurated in 2019.

The site, labeled "remarkable garden", illustrates the evolution of urban uses, moving from a royal place to a lively public space. His small cannon, symbol of Parisian times before the adoption of GMT (1911), and his missing statues (like Camille Desmoulins, melted in 1942) testify to his rich past. Today, there is still a place for walking and culture in the heart of the capital.

External links