Parc Rothschild (Boulogne-Billancourt)
The Parc Edmond de Rothschild in Boulogne-Billancourt is a partially public park on the outskirts of Paris .
history
The property in the Paris suburb was inherited in 1817 by the then 26-year-old banker Jakob Rothschild . He had the property enlarged to 30 hectares around 1850 and then built a palace in the neo-baroque style from 1856 to 1861 by the architect Joseph-Armand Berthelin and the painter Louis-Eugène Lami .
At that time the park was divided into a landscape garden and a part designed in the strictly regular geometric style of the French baroque parks . The regular garden section was designed by Louis-Eugène Lami. The landscaper was created by Joseph Paxton around 1860 , whose design was revised by the landscape architect Paul Loyre . Between 1900 and 1930, the third part of a Japanese garden was created by a Japanese gardener named Hatta. In 1924 another part of the park with rock gardens and water basins, called Routin, was laid out by a designer named Gaucher. A flowing water, the so-called Blue River, runs through it.
After the Baron's death in 1935, the palace and park began to decline. During the Second World War, the castle was requisitioned by the German Navy and suffered from the occupying forces. After 1945 it was temporarily occupied by the Americans. The Rothschild family finally got the disposal of the badly damaged building back, but did not use it. In 1975 it was used as a location for the French film India Song based on a script by Marguerite Duras with Delphine Seyrig , Michel Lonsdale and Mathieu Carrière . The decaying castle came into other private ownership, currently it is said to be owned by a member of the Saudi Arabian royal family .
When the Ambroise Paré hospital was built in 1969, the part of the park, which was laid out in the regular style, was destroyed. The part of the property on which the small Buchillot Castle (French: Château Buchillot) stands was also separated. In 1974 the link between the A13 motorway and the boulevard périphérique was built in the area of the castle park , which led to a further reduction in the park area, the fall of hundred-year-old chestnut trees and the separation of Château Buchillot from the rest of the site. The original Japanese garden has also been destroyed, but in what is now a public park, a section in the Asian garden style has been laid out again. There are still trees from the original Japanese garden that were kept small at the time, but are now growing normally.
The park still covers around 15 hectares today. It contains, among other things, a pond with an island, the so-called Blue River, waterfalls, a grotto and a riding arena. 77 types of woody plants are described in a park guide, including silver beeches , oriental plane trees , a trumpet tree , an almond tree , a Corsican pine , a cherry plum , a bitter orange , a ginkgo , a bush horse chestnut and numerous rhododendrons . A Lebanon cedar was planted a few meters from the entrance in memory of the Israeli politician Yitzchak Rabin, who was murdered in 1995 .
The Château Buchillot is now owned by the city and is a listed building. It is currently being renovated and will in future house a publicly accessible collection of works by the Parisian sculptor Paul Belmondo (1898–1982), including over 250 sculptures, over 400 medals and almost 900 drawings and sketches, donated by his children, the actor Jean-Paul Belmondo , his brother Alain and his sister Muriel. The opening was initially planned for May 2008, but was postponed until the end of 2009 / beginning of 2010.
What will happen to the Rothschild Castle remains uncertain. Two fires (1993 and 2003) devastated the already badly damaged interior.
Web links
- Website of the municipality of Boulogne-Billancourt on the park (French)
- Article by Oriane Beaufils for a French monument protection organization
Coordinates: 48 ° 51 ′ 0 ″ N , 2 ° 13 ′ 48 ″ E