Strolling Paris’s Promenade Plantée: French Ancestor of New York Metropolis’s Excessive Line Park
The view wanting down into the park from the doorway above.
Up to date February 2025
The mannequin for its up to date American cousin, The Excessive Line, Paris’s Promenade Plantée––often known as the Coulée Verte or “Flowing Inexperienced”––was the world’s first and solely elevated park earlier than its New York relative spawned quite a few followers, together with Chicago’s Bloomingdale Path, Philadelphia’s Studying Viaduct, Rotterdam’s Hofplein station, and the partially accomplished Chapultepec Forest Venture in Mexico Metropolis that can hyperlink a subway station to the town’s largest park, Chapultepec Forest.
Lined passages open onto open expansive and intimate seating areas.
Constructed on the previous prepare tracks of the Vincennes railway, the town resurrected the park in 1990 to create an in depth city inexperienced belt. The park runs about 2.8 miles alongside almost the complete size of Paris’s twelfth arrondissement, from the Bois de Vincennes on one finish to the Place de la Bastille on the opposite, its final hundred yards opening onto the Opéra Bastille.
Reflecting swimming pools had been dry however I might think about how they appeared stuffed.
Rising nearly hidden 3o toes above the busy streets beneath it, the roughly one-mile-long elevated portion of the Promenade Plantée is supported by the Viaduct des Arts, a sequence of 70 arches that had been as soon as a part of an outdated crumbling railroad viaduct rescued from scheduled demolition and restored in 1998. The Viaduct is now dwelling to a restaurant and cafe, a number of furnishings showrooms, 45 studios of inside designers, cabinet-makers, sculptors, ceramicists, tapestry-makers, violin and flute makers, furnishings restorers, and extra.
An outside gallery: the trellised wall beside the stone and painted facade was a research in contrasts.
My journey started on the ground-level portion of the park, just a few blocks off the Place Felix Eboué the place the Avenue Daumesnil intersects the Boulevard de Reuilly. I are typically geographically challenged, and my GPS didn’t present an entrance, nor had been there any indicators confirming I used to be anyplace close to the park. Though I communicate French, after I requested a number of passersby, nobody might direct me there. After wandering in regards to the neighborhood a bit, I occurred upon an not easily seen stairway the place I noticed a small signal marking one of many park’s entrances.
Descending the flight of stairs, I discovered myself on the sought-after verdant path, which delivered me into an underground tunnel-turned-grotto with waterfalls. The pass-through supplied the nice sound of trickling water as I approached the opposite finish. I hadn’t but reached the elevated portion of the park.
After the Allée Vivaldi, there’s a little bonus reward from the Jardin de Reuilly. A tiny detour into this charming park took me off the trail for a second, however one which was properly value it. I discovered an ideal bench for a day snack.
The Promenade contains some extremely slender passages. Simply after crossing the footbridge to the elevated portion above, the walkway passes by way of two buildings the place pedestrians squeeze their approach between the buildings that appear to be they had been as soon as one however had been later sliced down the center. Like a dwelling being with many personalities, every a part of this elevated park supplied a special view of the town, accompanied by all its Parisian scents and flavors.
Joggers ran by, moms pushed strollers, and lovers walked arm in arm or kissed on park benches as I navigated the linear greenscape previous roses and hollyhocks whereas inhaling the potent scent of rosemary wafting within the breeze.
Arched grapevine trellises, allées of bamboo, and columns of aromatic flowers punctuate the Promenade, all panorama components marking varied design durations in backyard design historical past. And, ah! There have been so many roses!
At some factors, I had a voyeuristic chook’s-eye view into some Parisian flats and terraces. Though their privateness could typically be compromised, how lucky these residents are to have this hidden backyard within the sky proper of their backyards.
The park’s allées mark entrances to its varied sections, every outlined by completely different plantings and forms of hardscaping.
Try these French derrières!
Each flip revealed one other jewel: small reflecting swimming pools, architectural particulars, and a few colossal al fresco basic sculptures. At one level alongside the way in which, I noticed a constructing facade adorned with 12 reproductions of Michelangelo’s “The Dying Slave.” The unique statues reside within the everlasting assortment on the Louvre.
The ultimate stretch took me to the sting of the Bastille. I felt simply as I do after having fun with a superb French meal: sated however wanting extra. Is anybody up for a stroll?
Photographs by Robin Plaskoff Horton.
