Square des Batignolles

The Square des Batignolles features extensive rolling lawns, a naturalistic stream, and a scenic pond that catches the eye with its resident koi and ducks. Created in eighteen sixty-two, this four-acre public park sits in the seventeenth arrondissement as a deliberate contrast to the rigid, formal designs of many older French gardens. It was commissioned by Napoleon the Third and designed by the engineer Jean-Charles Adolphe Alphand, who transformed what had been a vast, deserted wasteland into an English-style landscape garden to serve the residents of the newly annexed district.