But what about the powerhouse that was Éleanor of Aquitaine? The spirited duchess who, in marrying the King of France, brought her heady brand of passion to Paris; the beautiful adventuress who went on crusade and inspired reams of chivalrous literature; the mother of ten whose blood has flown through generations of European royals, right down to Elizabeth II. Is it because she eventually abandoned Paris for London, and her first husband for the future King of England, that she has been shunned here? At least her granddaughter, Blanche of Castile, flies the family flag, along with that queen’s daughter-in-law, Margaret of Provence who, like Eleanor, helped lead a crusade. (Although, it must be said, Blanche and Margaret had a fraught relationship spiked with envy and mistrust; mothers-in-law don’t come out well in the Luxembourg Gardens.)
And where is Catherine de Medici? A cousin of Marie’s, destiny had also transformed her into an unlikely French queen. Like Marie, she was neglected by her husband, but nevertheless enhanced her adopted city through architecture, and by importing Italian renaissance style. She also gave the French a brood of royal babies, even though fate saw the Valois line stop with them. Her most alluring and robust child, Marguerite (a.k.a. Margot), Henri’s first wife, surely also deserves to be up on a plinth. Curiously, the last Valois hurrah is represented by Catherine de Medici’s daughter-in-law, the ill-fated Mary of Scots, who grew up in the French court but sailed back home after the premature death of her husband, François II.
These feminine statues first graced the gardens in the 1840s. It was an era when royal rule was firmly re-established, and it was also the time of Romanticism, when many French people looked back longingly on the good old days. Romantic works of historical fiction inspired the nostalgia, and it perhaps also influenced which women were to be immortalised here. Alexandre Dumas père’s 1845 blockbuster, La Reine Margot, about the ambitious princess and her scheming mother, surely did Catherine and Marguerite no PR favours.
Find another green chair — beneath your favourite statue, in a shady grove or by the balustrade of the terrace. The Luxembourg’s garden chairs have changed over the years. The current design, by French outdoor furniture designer Fermob, comes in several variations: some sit upright for attentive types, and some slant snoozily backwards. It’s a modern take on the old 1920s slat chair, but I fondly remember the chairs of an even more vintage ilk — framed as finely as filigree, their seats like lace — that you’d occasionally come across back in the 1990s. Garden chairs have given Parisian parks a touch of whimsy since the seventeenth century. Some are clustered, as though they’ve hosted a heated philosophical debate among students of the nearby Sorbonne; others are paired, side by side for couples who have gazed romantically towards their future, or opposite one another in a more emotionally-charged manner; and then there are the solo chairs that have supported Parisians deep in reflection.
Now is the ideal time to get stuck into that book of yours. Here would also be the perfect place to inspire you to start the ultimate Gallic classic read, Les Misérables. Its author, Victor Hugo, would often pace around these very paths, doubtless dreaming up future literary scenes, such as Marius and Cosette’s first encounter, which he set here. Dumas père evidently also found inspiration in this park, making it the stomping ground for Athos, Porthos, Aramis and d’Artagnan in The Three Musketeers. Back in the mid-nineteenth century, the Luxembourg was larger and lusher, with more places to ramble and roam, so it was a dream destination for the city’s Romantic set. Later in the century, the park was trimmed and transformed into a more respectable kind of playground, but many statues added at the time paid tribute to the Romantics who used to flock here, such as George Sand.
Madame Sand can be found over by the Boulevard Saint-Michel, where storybook trees shade velvety lawns embroidered with blooms. If you delve into the nearby grove of chestnut trees you’ll find a little chalet housing a restaurant, La Terrasse de Madame. There’s no better place for lunch as you can sit — on the green garden furniture beneath the umbrellas and chestnut awning — for as long as you like, slowly savouring your salad, and glass (or more) of rosé. On a sunny day, in the dappled golden light, you could well be in an Impressionist painting.
Vincent Van Gogh composed the luminous Voie à Jardin du Luxembourg (Lane at the Jardin du Luxembourg) in 1886, soon after moving to Paris. By this time, at the height of the Belle Époque, the Luxembourg had become a fun park for all Parisians. The dainty music stand, just across from you, hails from this era of frivolity, and if you’re lucky an orchestra or jazz band will be at play.
As you walk off your lunch, you might notice something unique to Parisian parks: you rarely see joggers. And yet the locals are by and large on the slimmer side of things. Parisians — and especially Parisiennes — have obsessed over maintaining a svelte figure since the dawn of the twentieth century, when weighing machines could be found all over town. Several vintage scales remain in the Luxembourg Gardens (two by the Porte Saint-Michel, one next to the toy kiosk, one near the tennis courts, another by the playground) — although if you’re worried you might have over-indulged at lunch, not much can be done, as they only take francs. Anyway, we’re in the land of Marie de Medici, remember. She who was the very embodiment of the term rubenesque, having had the great artist himself, Peter Paul Rubens, paint her in all her corpulent majesty. The Marie de Medici Cycle — commissioned for the Luxembourg Palace, and now hanging in the Louvre — is a series of twenty-four large, luscious paintings depicting Marie amid gods and goddesses, the three graces, and all sorts of other glamorous drama. It’s gob-smackingly indulgent, but ultimately a rather endearing celebration of a woman who loved her food as much as herself.
And how could you resent the woman who gave — even if unwittingly — Paris such a perfection of a park? It’s a memory-making kind of a place, whether you’re here for an hour, a day or a lifetime. Generations of Parisians have grown up in the park they affectionately call the ‘Luco’ and it’s impossible not to feel a little envious. In the afternoon, after the arrondissement’s babies have woken from their midday slumber and toddlers have checked out of their crèches, the Luxembourg livens up with the glee of little ones, and it’s a treat to share their pleasure, and watch them prod their toy sailboats around the pond.
Children have their own special patch, over to the west, offering up more old-fashioned fun. There are the vintage balançoires — boat-like metal swings — and an 1879 carousel where children choose from a menagerie of animals and play jeu de bagues, an echo of the tilting-at-the-ring training that Louis XIII, who once played in these very gardens, would have himself undergone. Ponies trot to and fro, and there’s a puppet theatre, Les Marionettes du Luxembourg, that shows Guignol on high rotation. Guignol is the much-loved French figurine who sticks it to the police; watching well-behaved enfants laugh raucously when this beloved puppet beats up a pompous gendarme is somewhat illuminating. It tells you about the prickly relationship many French people have with their police, who have traditionally enjoyed vast powers. It also hints at the duality of the Gallic nature. French children are impressively well-behaved; many books will tell you this, but so too does an anthropological observation of a Parisian playground. Still, this is a country that has known both order and chaos, so it’s not surprising that its people might have emotional extremes, too. Like this garden, with its contrasts of formal and informal, restrained and rambling, French people sometimes happily submit to authority, and at other times might choose to run a little wild.
The Luxembourg has known bad times as well as good. The Germans occupied the park during World War II, their tanks turning the lawns and blooms into mud and mulch. And the grounds were a prison during the French Revolution. Joséphine de Beauharnais’ husband was interred here before being carted off to the guillotine, and I think of her whenever I walk past the little rose-edged sandpit playground by the Orangerie. Although it’s not a patch on the rose garden that bloomed here in the nineteenth century, with almost 2000 varieties, said
to be the world’s finest. Perhaps it had been inspired by Joséphine herself. As the wife of the soon-to-be Emperor Napoléon, she had lived in the Petit Luxembourg for a while, before finding her place in the world out at Château Malmaison, where she cultivated hundreds of roses, a flower that became her symbol. I once chanced upon an exhibition on Joséphine in the Musée du Luxembourg, just north of the Orangerie, and recall a finespun empire gown in cream lace embroidered with roses. Her spirit seemed very much at home around here.
Check to see if there’s another exhibition on, or one in the Orangerie, which doubles as an art space when its orange and palm trees are placed outside in the summer warmth. Either way, make time for afternoon tea at Angelina, which has a café at the museum’s entrance. May I suggest the chocolat à l’ancienne, old-style hot chocolate? It’s so thick and satisfying it would surely get the nod of approval from Queen Anne.
For your final stroll of the day, amble south, past the retirees playing chess under the paulownia trees — which transform into lacy lilac parasols in springtime — or pétanque in the dedicated jeux de boules court, just across from where the kids play their jeu de bagues. The cycle of Parisian life here is complete. From the babies in Silver Cross prams, to the kids playing ‘Quelle Heure Est-Il, Monsieur Le Loup?’, to the students deep in debate, to the newlyweds celebrating their local town-hall nuptials, to the champagne-drenched sixtieth birthday parties, to the silvery-haired couples with their matching walking sticks … You’ll notice many statues referencing antiquity, which seems rather fitting in this park for all ages.
It’s also a park for all seasons. In spring the tulips bob at your feet and chestnuts bloom pink overhead; in summer it’s the perfect mix of warm light and verdant shade; in autumn the orange and caramel leaves are raked up into crispy piles; and in winter the park seems to become a vintage black & white photograph. The Luxembourg reminds you to respect the seasons, and the natural rhythms of life. Just as the gates open and close according to sunrise and sunset, you come here to go with the flow of time.
In the south-western corner you’ll find the ‘English gardens’, with their whimsically winding pathways. The eighteenth-century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who championed a return to nature, once roamed around here, too; he would surely approve of the apiary buzzing with bees tipsy on linden and chestnut pollen, and the espalier orchard of apples and pears. Adorable follies of statues pop up here and there. I never fail to stop by the captivating ode to Rococo painter, Antoine Watteau, who used to walk around here, too, studying the leaves and the way light filtered through them, and finding inspiration for his pretty garden-party scenes that seem suspended in time and suffused with light-hearted happiness.
If you plan to leave the Luxembourg by the southern gate, you’ll see the long carpet of lawn edged with clipped chestnuts. The severity of the trimmed trees might suggest otherwise, but you are welcome to walk on the grass here — as the sign says, the pélouse is very much autorisée, and often scattered with parties of Parisians, enjoying their own Watteau-esque moment. In a park of contrasts — French and English, sun and shade, young and old — this juxtaposition of formality and informality, a little chaos within the order, somehow seems perfectly apt. Weather permitting, laze here for a while; appetite permitting, with an ice cream from the kiosque à glace in hand. For this truly is the sweet spot of Paris.
Itinerary
• La Grande Épicerie de Paris: 38 Rue de Sèvres 75007; 08.30-21.00 (Monday-Saturday), 09.00-20.00 (Sunday)
• Barthélemy: 51 Rue de Grenelle 75007; 08.30-13.00, 15.30-19.15 (Tuesday-Thursday), 08.30-13.00, 15.00-19.00 (Friday, Saturday); closed Sunday
• Debauve & Gallais: 30 Rue des Saints-Pères 75007; 09.00-19.00; closed Sunday
• Ladurée: 21 Rue Bonaparte 75006; 08.30-19.30 (Monday-Saturday), 10.00-19.30 (Sunday)
• Rue de Buci 75006
• Paul: 21 Rue de Buci 75006; 07.30-20.30 (Monday-Thursday), 07.30-21.00 (Friday, Saturday), 07.30-20.00 (Sunday)
• Carrefour: 15 Rue de Buci 75006; 08.30-23.30 (Monday-Saturday); 09.00-12.45 (Sunday)
• Nicolas: 13 Rue de Buci 75006; 15.00-20.30 (Monday), 09.30-20.30 (Tuesday-Saturday), 10.00-14.00, 15.00-19.00 (Sunday)
• Quai d’Orléans, Île Saint-Louis 75004
Etymological types aren’t quite sure how the curious word ‘picnic’ came to be. But it was French in origin, and coined in the late seventeenth century to denote a casual new form of feasting where friends would meet outdoors with their own dish to add to the table. Or grass, as the case might have been. But not since Impressionist times, when Manet and Monet celebrated the dappled delights of al fresco dining, has le pique-nique enjoyed the cultural cred it has in the Instagram age. Come spring, every Parisian influencer worth her fleur de sel will surely post a succession of mouth-watering images of crusty baguettes, plump strawberries and sun-warmed cheese strewn over a gingham cloth in some blossom-laden park.
For a culture renowned for its five-star fine dining, a picnic might at first seem somewhat at odds in a place like Paris. But it’s all about balance, non? As a svelte Parisienne — with a croissant in one hand, a radish in the other — might say with a nonchalant shrug. And in the binary city that is Paris — Left Bank, Right Bank — a picnic makes sense because it’s a fresh counterpoint to all the heavy, sauce-laden bistrot fare. In France, picnics celebrate the delicious simplicity of regional produce; in this way they’re also a link to the ancestral land that urban Parisians so revere, their beloved terroir.
The fruits of French farmers’ labour are on artful display at La Grande Épicerie de Paris, the superb food hall of the department store Le Bon Marché. There are ready-made platters of cheese assortments —encrusted in nuts, peppered with herbs or oozing from orange rinds; tomatoes so perfectly round and bright they look painted by a five year old; lettuce as prettily frilled as a Chloé dress; precious jewels of berries encased in basket-like punnets; yoghurt in dear little glass pots in every which flavour; butter in all shapes and sizes, from large logs to small rounds; jars of tartinables, otherwise known as deluxe spreads; packets of madeleines and mini toasts, tablets of chocolate and tins of pastilles; and countless bottles of champagne in handy (designer) handbag sizes. There’s even a ‘Pique-Nique’ section, for all your paper-plate and patterned-napkin desires.
It’s all divine and, of course, a splurge. ‘You know it’s not where real Parisians shop, don’t you?’ laughed a Parisian friend Clémentine, when I declared how nifty it would be to have this as your local supermarché. And it’s true: Fine-tune your ears and you’ll mostly hear the varied accents of expats, as they make their way to the ‘L’Invité’ (guest) section to buy a jar of mustard or tapenade or the like to give to the hostess of that evening’s cocktail soirée. ‘Parisians mostly prefer shopping at smaller specialty boutiques,’ continued Clémentine. ‘So we can hunt out the best this, or the best that.’
So if your Parisian picnic budget doesn’t spread entirely to La Grande Épicerie, buy one thing for the pure fabulousness of it (truffle chips? Doll’s-size bread brochettes? Pastel sugar-crystal swizzle sticks?) and then head up Rue du Bac. You’ll pass a pâtisserie or two, so you can grab any tart that captures your imagination. But whatever you do, don’t miss Barthélemy, just around the corner on Rue de Grenelle. With a quaint shopfront like something you’d see in rural France — shiny tiles and pastoral paintings — this fromagerie is the most famous of all Parisian cheese boutiques, supplying the Élysée Palace and counting Charlotte Gainsbourg and Catherine Deneuve among its fans. The pungently aired shop seems to stock something from every corner of the country, but if your head is spinning from sheer choice, if not the full-bodied aroma, look for the house specialty: the Fontainebleau, a tub of cheesy mousse spun from cow’s milk. Or, for a traditional platter trio, ask for a wedge of gooey brie, a slab of something hard like Comté, and a disc of tangy goat’s cheese (chèvre).
Next, walk east along Rue de Grenelle, past the an
tiquated restaurant La Petite Chaise — it has been operating in some form since 1680, around the time a picnic was becoming a thing — and turn left at Rue des Saints-Pères. Across Boulevard Saint-Germain you’ll find a treat of a chocolaterie, Debauve & Gallais. The sumptuous interior, all neo-Classical Italianate with its marble columns and fanlight arches, is something to behold. It was designed by Emperor Napoléon’s beloved architects, Percier and Fontaine (they of Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel fame). Its chocolate has history, too; the pistoles were originally created by co-founder Sulpice Debauve for Marie Antoinette, back when he worked as a royal pharmacist. (A little chocolate for your health? See, I told you that Parisiennes know how to balance the good things in life.)
Up at Rue Jacob, turn right and walk a block; on the corner of Rue Bonaparte, you’ll see another darling shopfront, painted the signature celadon green of Ladurée, with cascades of leaves tumbling down from the mezzanine flowerpots. The window displays, from afar, seem to showcase colourful millinery or jewellery, but as you get closer you see that macarons make up the pyramids and fill the hatboxes. It’s all so delicious that you realise why the French say window-licking (faire du lèche-vitrine) instead of window-shopping. Don’t just lick, though; venture inside for a casket of multi-coloured macarons — no self-respecting Parisian pique-nique would be complete without them.
Rue Jacob ends at Rue de Seine; turn right, and you’ll soon find yourself at Rue de Buci. The strip is still often referred to as a market street, even though few signs of those old days remain. The corner Bar du Marché, beneath its red-and-white-striped awning, serves up nostalgia for yesteryear, before the nearby poissonnerie was made over into the ‘Boissonnerie’ restaurant (69 Rue de Seine), and Rue de Buci’s seafood stall, delis and florist morphed into yet more cafés. A little further along Rue de Seine, just south of Buci, the long-time butcher might have recently got the chop, but (for now at least) you can still shop at the corner fruit and vegetable store under the legendary Hôtel La Louisiane (I like to think this is where the hotel’s onetime resident Simone de Beauvoir bought her apples). If it’s a Friday, Saturday or Sunday, there might be a few extra stalls here, selling chunks of cheese and bottles of Chablis. Failing that, pop into the trusty boulangerie Paul, and the Carrefour supermarket tucked just behind for all other food needs. You’ll find a ubiquitous Nicolas liquor shop a few steps away; buy yourself a chilled rosé or two (and a bottle opener and glasses, as chugging from the bottle is pas très chic).
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