Bois de Boulogne

This article is about the park in Paris. For the Montreal commuter rail station, see Bois-de-Boulogne station. For the two 1896 short films, see Bois de Boulogne (film).

48°52′N 2°15′E / 48.86°N 2.25°E / 48.86; 2.25

Bois de Boulogne as seen from the Eiffel Tower

The Bois de Boulogne (French pronunciation: [bwɑ d(ə) bulɔɲ], "Boulogne woodland") is a large public park that is the western half of the 16th arrondissement of Paris, near the suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt and Neuilly-sur-Seine. The land was ceded to the city of Paris by the Emperor Napoleon III to be turned into a public park in 1852.[1]

It is the second-largest park in Paris, slightly smaller than the Bois de Vincennes on the eastern side of the city. It covers an area of 845 hectares (2088 acres),[2] which is about two and a half times the area of Central Park in New York, slightly larger than Phoenix Park in Dublin,[3] and slightly smaller than Richmond Park in London.

Within the boundaries of the Bois de Boulogne are an English landscape garden with several lakes and a cascade; two smaller botanical and landscape gardens, the Château de Bagatelle and the Pré-Catelan; a zoo and amusement park in the Jardin d'Acclimatation; GoodPlanet Foundation's Domaine de Longchamp dedicated to ecology and humanism, The Jardin des Serres d'Auteuil, a complex of greenhouses holding a hundred thousand plants; two tracks for horse racing, the Hippodrome de Longchamp and the Auteuil Hippodrome; the Stade Roland Garros where the French Open tennis tournament is held each year, the Louis Vuitton Foundation art museum and cultural center,[4] and other attractions.

  1. ^ Dominique Jarrassé, Grammaire des jardins Parisiens, p. 94.
  2. ^ Jarrassé, Dominique, Grammaire des jardins Parisiens, p. 94.
  3. ^ "Phoenix Park History and Trivia - Ordnance Survey Ireland". 31 January 2020.
  4. ^ "Bois de Boulogne, the fanciest park in Paris". Paris Digest. 2018. Retrieved 19 October 2018.