Jardin des Plantes, Paris

Jardin des Plantes is France’s principal botanical garden, and this living collection began as a place for medicinal plants. The garden was established in 1635 by order of Louis XIII as the Royal Garden of Medicinal Plants, under the care of the king’s physician Guy de la Brosse. Its purpose quickly reached beyond cultivation: teachers used the collections to instruct future doctors and pharmacists in botany, chemistry, and geology.

Today, the grounds contain more than 10,000 plant species, glasshouses devoted to tropical plants, a garden for roses, a winter garden, an Alpine garden, and the Ménagerie, a small zoo formed in 1795 from animals saved when Versailles’s royal menagerie was dismantled. The site also houses the National Museum of Natural History. Its exhibition buildings include the Grande Galerie de l’Évolution, the Gallery of Mineralogy and Geology, the Gallery of Paleontology and Comparative Anatomy, and the Gallery of Botany, whose herbarium holds almost 8 million plant samples. Look toward the buildings and garden paths together: this is not simply a park, but a continuing centre of research, teaching, collections, and public science.