Jardin des Plantes: Buffon's Gloriette and the Cedar in the Hat
Why is it significant?
Climb the spiral path through the little maze of hedges until you reach the top of the hill, and you will find a small iron pavilion like a lace parasol. This is the Gloriette de Buffon, finished in the 1780s, and it is often called the oldest metal structure in Paris.
Key Facts
| Place | Jardin des Plantes: Buffon's Gloriette and the Cedar in the Hat |
|---|---|
| Address | Jardin des Plantes, 57 Rue Cuvier, 75005 Paris, France |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.84310, 2.35590 |
| Part of Walk | Students, Saints and Gladiators: Paris's Latin Quarter from the Sorbonne to the Panthéon |
| Generated | Generated |
Climb the spiral path through the little maze of hedges until you reach the top of the hill, and you will find a small iron pavilion like a lace parasol. This is the Gloriette de Buffon, finished in the 1780s, and it is often called the oldest metal structure in Paris. From here, through the trees, the rooftops of the Latin Quarter spread out below you.
The garden began as a pharmacy. In 1635 King Louis the Thirteenth allowed his physicians to create a royal garden of medicinal plants, and in 1640 it opened to the public, one of the first gardens in Paris where anyone could walk in. Botanists came here to teach in French rather than Latin, which made the learned doctors of the Faculty of Medicine absolutely furious.
Its golden age came under the Count of Buffon, who ran the garden for almost fifty years, from 1739 until his death in 1788. He doubled its size, filled it with collections from all over the world, and wrote a natural history of the whole living world that ran to dozens of volumes. He even dared to suggest the Earth was far older than the Bible allowed, which got him into trouble with the theologians of the Sorbonne.
On the way down the hill, look for a great cedar of Lebanon with spreading, flat branches. It was planted in 1734 by the botanist Bernard de Jussieu. The legend says he carried the seedling all the way from England in his hat, watering it with his own drinking ration on the crossing. It is probably not true... but nobody in Paris would ever tell it any other way.
In 1793 the Revolution turned the royal garden into the National Museum of Natural History, with twelve professors instead of one royal steward, and scholars like Lamarck and Cuvier working within a few steps of each other. Some of the great ideas about how species change over time were argued out under these trees. Now walk down the hill and head north-east through the garden, past the old houses of the professors, toward the low pavilions and cages of the menagerie.