Parisian Parks Are Where to Find French Showing Their True Colors

As Post-Impressionistic French painter Georges Seurat illustrated a century ago, there is nothing better than a day in the park for a relaxed, intimate portrait of Paris and its people.

Alas, the particular park on the banks of the Seine where Seurat painted his distinctive pointillist masterpiece, “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” has been elbowed aside by the growth of Paris.

But there remains within the city a wealth of other parks where on a bright day, preferably on a weekend, you can revel in the varied landscaping; stroll, promenade or jog; picnic on the grass, snack at a stand or dine luxuriously in a restaurant; or simply find a chair or a bench, or sit under a tree, lean back and observe the passing scene.

My appreciation of the city’s parks was heightened considerably a few years ago when my wife and I, accompanied by our then-15-month-old son Josef, took an apartment in Paris. Josef’s need of at least one extended romp a day and our desire to experience a Paris beyond the usual tourist attractions combined into an diverting exploration of the city’s scattered parks and playgrounds.

To me, the parks of Paris are where residents shed their reputedly brusque manners, along with their ties or high heels, to play with their children, treat them to a merry-go-round or pony ride, read the weekend paper or a book, indulge in a game of chess, go rowing, kick a soccer ball, flirt or merely doze away a warm afternoon. It is in parks, I believe, that the Parisians become real people, at ease with the world and more tolerant of tourists.

Parisian parks vary, reflecting in the differences their rich histories, the pretensions of their neighborhoods and the proclivities of nearby residents.

Perhaps no park demonstrates this better than the Luxembourg Gardens. A 60-acre oasis of green located in the heart of the Left Bank, it was designed in the formal French manner of straight paths, edged by disciplined trees, pampered flower beds and manicured lawns. Among the park’s 90 odd--some very odd--monuments is a 9-foot-high model of the Statue of Liberty by Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, who lived and worked a few blocks away.

The park’s focal point is a marvelous octagonal-shaped basin and fountain around which you can sit and watch children of all ages launch toy sailboats and remote-controlled boats. There is a wealth of other diversions, including tennis and boule courts, playgrounds, pony rides, a marionette theater, a chess pavilion, a modest cafe and restaurant and the usual scrumptious snack stands.

Bordering the park on the north is the Luxembourg Palace, built in a flamboyant Italian-style in the early 17th Century for Queen Marie de Medici to remind her of the Pitti Palace of her native Florence. Over the years it has served as a monastery, a prison for those who were to be guillotined during the Reign of Terror, a parliament house, headquarters for the German Luftwaffe stationed in France during World War II, and, at present, the home of the French Senate.

But what makes the Luxembourg Gardens special is the broad cross section of people who frequent it. On a given weekday morning, even when the skies are gray and the air nippy, the park attracts joggers, mothers and nannies with young children, chess players and solitary citizens with books; at lunchtime, tastefully dressed politicians and legislative aides from the Senate, executives and secretaries from nearby offices, and tourists eating alfresco; in the afternoon, older children, teen-agers and more-senior citizens; and throughout the day waves of students from the nearby Sorbonne. It is the students studying, arguing, and romancing that adds a special Parisian ambience.

For me, Sunday is the Luxembourg’s best day, when it seems that everyone is there; the students, the bon chic yuppies and their bon chic babies, the grandparents, the tourists and the inevitable park wardens keeping an eye on everything and making sure that only children under 6 (and their guardians) play on certain patches of grass, that no one picks the flower displays that are constantly being redone, and that everybody is out of the park half an hour before sunset so that the ornate, gold-paint-tipped gates can be locked.

More sedate, reflecting its residential surroundings in the fashionable 17th Arrondissement, and more fanciful is Parc Monceau, which was designed in 1778 for the Duke of Orleans by the artist Carmontelle as a land of dreams. He scattered across the undulating English-styled landscape a pyramid, a pagoda, a Roman temple and a colonnade, among other follies. By far the most diverse and diverting park in Paris is the 2,224-acre Bois de Boulogne. Here there is something for everyone; gardens for “taking the air,” woods for hiking and bird-watching, meadows for picnics and kite flying, fields for soccer and an occasional softball game, tennis courts, a range for clay-pigeon shooting, the famed Longchamp for thoroughbred racing, and Autiel, the steeplechasing track.

Also in the Bois, as it is popularly known, are bicycle paths, lakes for rowing, a children’s amusement park, including a zoo and and farm; a more informal and dubious adult amusement area, where soliciting prostitutes gather at dusk; and a range of restaurants to satisfy the gourmand and gourmet, as well as three generations of a bourgeois family out for a Sunday feast, or a romantic couple seeking anonymity.

My favorite area in the park is the Bagatelle, a collage of formal and informal gardens, groves of trees, rolling lawns, sculpted, shadowed lakes and a waterlily pond that brings to life scenes of an idealized French countryside that could have been painted by any of the great Impressionists. Particularly ethereal are the rose gardens, especially if you catch them in full bloom in June. Beckoning after a stroll through this idyll is a cafe under a canopy of oaks in a courtyard behind a petite chateau that was built in 1775 as a plaything for Marie Antoinette.

What the Bois de Boulogne is to the haute west side of Paris the sprawling Bois de Vincennes is to the robust east side. Both serve as a reflection and a refuge. Here, dogs and children roamed, the laughter at family picnics seemed louder, the wine and food appeared more hearty, the music at the free concerts louder, the play in the soccer games rougher and the lovers in the woods bolder.

Yet with its lakes, floral and tropical gardens, meandering walks and deep forests, an impressive zoo, biking and horseback riding and historic chateau dating to the 14th Century, the park could also be diverting and genteel.

Almost everywhere we went in the city we found an inviting park or playground, where we could sit and enjoy the surroundings. There was, for instance, the square around the corner from the Picasso Museum.

I forget its name, but not the memory in my mind’s eye of the sun streaming through the trees there, creating a play of light and shadows on the lawn, flower beds, the people sitting on the benches and the children playing in the sandbox. I remember thinking at the moment that I didn’t need to go to one of the nearby museums to view the art, for the scene in the square was in itself a memorable portrait of Paris.