Walking tours to historic gardens in Paris that connect garden design, city planning and architecture.
Join us on a Picturesque Garden tour and learn how gardens or squares influenced the design of Paris and history of France. Each season offers new possibilities to appreciate landscape architecture and the changing colors of the city’s exceptional trees and flowers.
Then & Now: Each tour begins with an iBook presentation of images selected from historical archives, providing a comparative context for viewing Paris today. After the tour, you can add your own photos to create a personal souvenir of your Picturesque Voyage.
Garden Tours Upon Request
There are approximately 450 gardens in Paris. In addition to our regularly scheduled tours we can arrange visit to the Promenade Plantée (precursor to the High Line in New York City); the Parc de Bercy, located at the former wine center of Paris; Gilles Clement’s Jardin En Movement, one of the first sustainable gardens at the Parc André Citroen; the Parc Montsouris, a nineteenth century urban park; and Jardin Albert Kahn; We are happy to arrange sensorial visits to accompany any of our garden tours.
Our tours specialize in historic landscapes but recognizing the diversity of garden cultures in and around Paris.
Kitchen Gardens: Tour the Potager du Roi; Versailles; roof top permaculture gardens at the Bazar de l’Hôtel de Ville and Galeries Lafayette; or Le Potager du Jardin Roche Guyon near Giverny.
Botanical Gardens: Specialized tours to gardens of particular botanical interest include the Jardin des Plantes, Paris or the Serres Auteuil.
Send us an email or call us to arrange a tour to best accommodate your interests.
Picturesque Voyages Tours Adhere to Recommended Health and Safety Guidelines
- All tour participants are required to wear masks. Masks can be provided upon request.
- Tours are limited to 6 persons. Family groups may be larger.
- All garden and walking tours maintain social distancing standards.
Contact us to plan a personalized itinerary for a most memorable, life-long learning experience.
The Tuileries and Palais Royal
3-Hour Garden Tour (120€ per person)
We explore the Tuileries, the birthplace of the French formal garden style. Commissioned by Queen Catherine de Medici during the French Renaissance, the garden became an iconic expression of royal control over the landscape as well as a training ground for generations of gardeners, notably André Le Nôtre who in the 17th century transformed the garden into the one we know today. We learn about the Carrousel Gardens (redesigned by Jacques Wirtz) and the sculptures in the open-air museum. We then continue on to the adjacent Palais Royal gardens, also built in the 17th century but radically transformed in the 18th century into a fashionable shopping district. As we stroll the arcades that surround the garden, we visit the trendy boutiques and learn about the cafés that once inspired French revolutionaries.
The Luxembourg Gardens and the Pantheon
3-Hour Garden Tour (120€ per person, entrance fee included)
Beloved by residents and students on the Left Bank, the 25-acre garden is an early example of the French formal garden and includes an orangery and orchard. Queen Marie de Medici commissioned the garden on what was then a suburban site, introducing the latest innovations from Italy, including fountains and a grotto that can still be seen today. While strolling the garden, we visit the grotto, orangery, and orchard, and discover some of the 125 sculptures, many dedicated to the queens of France. After our tour of the garden we continue onto one of the city’s architectural marvels, the Pantheon, once a former church and now a secular mausoleum dedicated to noteworthy French citizens. One of the highest and most picturesque points of the city, this neoclassical building is an ideal place to learn about French history.
Parc Monceau and Nissim de Camondo Museum
3-Hour Garden and Museum Tour (150€ per person, entrance fee included)
The Parc Monceau is one of the most stunning examples of the picturesque style gardens that survived the French Revolution. Commissioned by Louis XVI’s cousin, the Duke du Chartres, the garden’s winding paths and wide lawns are interspersed with fake ruins, gothic archways, and a miniature pyramid that served as an ice house. Our private tour will explain the meaning of these buildings, as well as the history of the park in the 19th century, where artists such as Claude Monet painted in what was the first public park redesigned under the Second Empire. Today’s strollers enjoy the many remarkable trees and sculptures dedicated to writers and musicians including Chopin and Maupassant. We then move onto the Musée Nissim de Camondo, a private house museum dedicated to 18th-century art and interior decoration, featuring collections that are in perfect harmony with the park.
The Butte Chaumont and La Villette
3-Hour Garden Tour (120€ per person)
This walking garden tour brings us to the intersection of landscape design and urban renewal. Starting out at the Butte Chaumont, we explore one of the greatest examples of the picturesque in 19th-century Paris, and one of the earliest examples of an urban renewal project. A former site of medieval gallows and gypsum quarry, the 62-acre, crescent-shaped park boasts walking bridges, hidden grottos, and a stunning rock formation. Next we move to La Villette, the result of an international competition by the City of Paris to develop a modern park on the site of the former meat-packing district. The winning design by Bernard Tshumi completely revised the essential geometries underlying landscape architecture –lines, planes, and dots– and transformed them into what is now home to a museum, the Cité de la Musique (Christian de Potzamparc), a temporary exhibition hall and Jean Nouvel’s Paris Symphony Orchestra building.
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