Brief reminder of Part 1 (without mistake ) :
The Parc des Buttes-Chaumont was designed on former gypsum quarries. Previously, this site was a sewage treatment plant and then a place where horses were slaughtered and rendered. Napoleon III decided to transform the site into a pleasure garden.
It took three years to complete the titanic earthworks and create the landscaping. This feet required 1000, workers, a hundred horses, 450 wagons on 39 km of rails, 2 steam engines and the use of dynamite to blow up the rock. While the whole area is terraced and backfill to create structured vegetation arrangements, the reliefs are the result of former cavities in the quarry. The Parc des Buttes-Chaumont was inaugurated on April 1, 1867 on the occasion of the Universal Exhibition. The English-style garden features a lake fed by three stream, waterfalls, rocks, a groto with fake stalactites and numerous plant species that decorate the entire park. A rocky island stands in the middle of the lake. It reveal the romantic Temple of the Sybil, which is a replica of the Temple of Tivoli. It was created by the architect Davioud in 1869 who used an Ionic and Corinthian style for its composition. It has 8 columnes and a base of Jura stone. The park is home to trees of local and exotic species, which cling to the sides of the hills, sometimes on a path, or on a steeply sloping law. The smell of resin from a majestic cedar blend with the woody, sligtly spicy scent of one of the first redwoods planted in France. In addition to plantations, rocks and other natural structures, architectural elements such as bridges, footbridges, temples and pavilions were built.
This park is a splendid green setting, peaceful and bucolic, where a multitude of birds share this natural territory, thus transforming a site that was once one of the most glomy and nauseating in the capital. |
