Parc des Buttes-Chaumont

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One of the most unusual parks in Paris is the Buttes-Chaumont park, in the northeastern part of the city near La Villette. The name of the park is a corruption of words meaning “bald mountain,” and it is so called because much of the park is built on a massive outcropping of rock unlike anything else you will see in the city. It was a refuse dump two hundred years ago, and it had an evil reputation until the 1800s, but today it is very pretty. The most remarkable thing about the park, though, is that there is a twenty-story difference between its highest and lowest elevations!

The center of the park contains a circular lake with a 16-story mountain of sheer rock walls rising in the center, which is what you see in this photograph. At the top of this mountain is a small gazebo with a commanding view of the surrounding area of Paris to the west (near the top center of the photo). Two bridges connect the island with the rest of the park. One, a suspension bridge, is fairly close to the surface of the lake and is not visible in this photo (it would be off to the left if you could see it). The other, nicknamed the “suicide bridge” because of the unfortunate use to which some visitors have put it, is a masonry bridge about twelve stories above the lake; it is visible at left of center in this photograph. The island seen in this photo is honeycombed with man-made and natural caves through which you can stroll, if you so desire; it is hugely popular with children for that reason (the walkways are well built and have railings to prevent accidents).

Sheer cliffs and sharp changes in elevation abound in this remarkable park. There is even a waterfall thirteen stories high (well behind the camera in this photo) that drops precipitously into a grotto at the lake level—for comparison purposes, this is about two-thirds the height of Niagara Falls! The lake itself is supplied by several streams and the waterfall, which in turn are supplied by the nearby Canal Saint-Martin. I presume that the lake drains somehow into the Seine River; it must be at very nearly the river level here.

The geography of the park makes it difficult to get a good overall picture. In this photo, the background seems dominated by what could be bushes, but these are actually treetops; the slope you are looking at in the foreground steepens to about a 45-degree angle and ends in an abrupt drop off a cliff down to the level of the lake. You are looking roughly northwest in the photograph, which was taken in the middle of the afternoon.

Photographed on June 18, 2000.