Greening Paris: A Brief History

09/12/22 • 5 min

Today's greening plan is not the first effort to make Paris a green city. Here are notable greening moments from Catherine de Medici to Georges-Eugene Haussmann.

This podcast was created by Roger Mummert for www.theparisproject.net.

Today's greening plan is not the first effort to make Paris a green city. Here are notable greening moments from Catherine de Medici to Georges-Eugene Haussmann.

This podcast was created by Roger Mummert for www.theparisproject.net.

Previous Episode

De-Greening the Champ-de-Mars

The Champ-de-Mars by the Eiffel Tower, which was created for military drills, is today a battleground for city planners vs. tree advocates. In a city that, for centuries, was built with boulevards and vistas that project la gloire de France for visitors, Parisians ask: Is our city to be looked at--or lived in?

This podcast was created by Roger Mummert for www.theparisproject.net.

Next Episode

Walking a Lobster: Birth of La Bohème

bohemianism

Living a life of l’art pour l’art, flaunting conventions, embracing poverty and rejecting bourgeois values and comforts.
Part 1
Walking a Lobster: Birth of la Bohème

In the 1830s, the poet Gerard de Nerval attached a blue silk leash to his pet lobster Thibault and walked him through the gardens of the Palais Royal. It is difficult today to appreciate the significance of this gesture. At the time, de Nerval, a poet’s poet among the young Parisian literati, was (with the participation of Thibault the lobster) making a shocking artistic and social statement.
De Nerval was a bohemian.

This podcast was created by Roger Mummert for www.theparisproject.net.

Paris: "A City of Ideas" - Greening Paris: A Brief History

Transcript

Greening Paris: A Brief History

From Medieval to modern times, Paris developed as a dense and impacted city with relatively little green space. But along the way, there were efforts to capture the health and social benefits of open spaces and greenery.
Let’s hand out gold stars for notable figures in the history of the greening of Paris:

Catherine de Medici created the Tuilleries as an Italian Renaissance garden in 1564. A century later, the