Timeline

Key figures

Origin and history

The Parc des Buttes-Chaumont is a green area of 24.73 hectares in Paris, located in the 19th arrondissement. Inaugurated on April 1, 1867 under Napoleon III, it was designed by the engineer Adolphe Alphand and the landscapers Jean-Pierre Barillet-Deschamps and Édouard André. This English garden, with its rocks, waterfalls and artificial lake, transforms an old gypsum quarries and landfills site into a picturesque landscape inspired by the Alps and the Normandy coasts.

Prior to its development, the site housed the Gibet de Montfaucon (Middle Ages–17th century), then an unsanitary road where Parisian waste was stored. The gypsum quarries, exploited until 1860, left an unstable land unsuitable for construction. The Haussmannian project aimed to clean up and embellish Paris, inspired by London's parks, while providing a walking area accessible to all social classes.

The works (1864–67) mobilized more than 1,000 workers to reshape the relief, dig a lake of 1.5 hectares and erect works such as the temple of the Sibylle or a suspended bridge signed Gustave Eiffel. The park became a symbol of the urban transformations of the Second Empire, despite criticism of its cost (3,4 million francs) and technical complexity. His inauguration coincided with the Universal Exhibition of 1867.

During the Paris Commune (1871), the park was a bastion of the insurgents, then the scene of bloody repression: hundreds of corpses were thrown into the lake or burned. In the 20th century, it evolved into a place of memory (memory plates) and biodiversity, home to rare flora and a variety of fauna, while remaining a popular setting for cinema and literature.

Ranked a protected site in 1958, the park now combines historical heritage and ecological management. Its partially ground lawns, chalets-restaurants and views make it a natural and cultural space, marked by its turbulent history, from the Old Regime to contemporary issues.

External links