The Buttes Chaumont Park is one of the ones commissioned by Napoleon III and Prefect Haussmann to reform Paris and give a green lung to the working classes, as done in London.
It was arranged by engineer Jean-Charles Alphand in 1867 on the old hills with their pictorial slopes. It is a prototype of Haussmannian park; it shows an ideal nature highlighting romantic details, i.e. Etretat landscape, with its lake and hollow needle, Tivoli gardens with the Temple of Sybil dominating the island (conceived by architect Davioud), false Pyrenean cave. Its flora includes especially Himalaya cedars, gingkos. In the park some scenes from Alain Resnais’ film “On connait la chanson” were shot.
