Jardin des plantes

The Jardin des Plantes is Paris’s main botanical garden, located in the 5th arrondissement on the Left Bank and forming the central garden component of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle. The institution traces its origins to a royal medicinal garden founded in the 17th century and was reorganized during the French Revolution into a national scientific garden.

Visitors can explore themed beds, a rose garden, an alpine section and large historic glasshouses that exhibit tropical and desert plants. The garden also contains a small menagerie (one of the oldest zoological collections in Europe) and buildings associated with the national natural history museum.

Established as a royal medicinal garden in the 17th century, the site was transformed into the Jardin des Plantes and incorporated into the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle during the revolutionary period in the late 18th century. Many of the present greenhouses and museum galleries date from 19th-century developments.

The garden occupies a riverside block in Paris’s 5th arrondissement on the Left Bank of the Seine, close to Gare d’Austerlitz and within walking distance of central academic and cultural institutions.

• Scientific and historic institutions: The garden is part of the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle and is arranged for both public display and scientific study, with historic greenhouses and a small zoo dating back to the late 18th century.

What to See #

• Formal and themed gardens: Series of themed gardens and cultivated beds including the rose garden, the alpine rock garden and the systematic beds used for botanical study and display.
• Greenhouses and ménagerie: Large historical greenhouses (Grandes Serres) housing tropical and subtropical plant collections, and the small zoo (Ménagerie) originally established in the late 18th century.