LUXEMBOURG, Gardens

As you walk around the Luxembourg gardens, you'll begin to understand why they're so famous: their sweetness is immortalized in many Impressionist paintings that are set among the rows of horse chestnuts, the vast flowerbeds, the typical iron chairs, and the large circular pond. Of course, today there are no longer nurses with white aprons and bonnets, but above all in their best part of the year, the gardens offer magnificent strolls through their well-cared for 25 hectares.

They were created at the beginning of the 1600s for Maria de' Medici, and opened to the public just before the French Revolution. They should have been inspired by the Boboli Gardens in Florence, but at the beginning of the 1800s they were transformed into a "French garden", with long tree-lined avenues and ample green spaces.

Over the years, they have become a memorial for great writers and poets through tombstones and monuments. I would especially like to point out the bas-relief in memory of the great novelist Stendhal, which was sculpted by Rodin.

But now go to the large circular pond that was created in the Napoleonic era at the center of a row of steps by the imperial architect, who adapted beautiful sixteenth-century mythological statues to its interior.

From the central pond, turning your back to the palace, your walk continues in the direction of the Avenue de la Observatoire, adorned with nineteenth-century fountains and sculptures. At the end of the avenue, you can visit the oldest functional Astronomical Observatory in the world, which was built in the second half of the seventeenth century by the same architect as the façade of the Louvre. It consists of a central building flanked by two side towers, and contains an extraordinary collection of scientific instruments: if you are passionate about studying the stars, entering here is a must....