Bagatelle Park, located in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, is the result of a famous 1777 bet between Marie Antoinette and her brother-in-law, the Comte d’Artois, who built the elegant neoclassical castle in just 64 days with the help of architect Francois-Joseph Belanger and 900 workers, spending more than three million livres on it. The name Bagatelle comes from the Italian word bagattella, meaning "trinket" or "something insignificant," which reflected the original idea of the castle as a place for pleasure and entertainment, although the result was magnificent. A unique feature of the park is its rose garden, created in 1905 by Jean-Claude Nicolas Forestier and featuring about 10,000 rose bushes of 1,200 species, as well as the world's oldest international new rose competition, held here since 1907. The park combines French regular and Anglo-Chinese landscape gardens with artificial grottoes, waterfalls, pagoda, abbey ruins and a nymph pond created by Scottish gardener Thomas Blaikie. The castle is decorated with the motto "Parva sed Apta" ("Small but suitable"), borrowed from the Italian poet Ariosto, which emphasizes its closeness and comfort. Historically, this place was associated with hedonism and love scrolls even before the construction of the castle, and during the Revolution it escaped destruction, becoming a popular restaurant, and was later acquired by the city of Paris in 1905. The geology of the park is artificially enriched with picturesque rock formations, like a large rock with a waterfall, as well as a variety of exotic trees, including oaks, pines, redwoods and cedars, planted since the end of the XVIII century. The park is open to the public and offers idyllic walks amidst poetic landscapes where time seems to have stopped. The entrance fee to the park is 2.7 euros per adult.

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Она

Level 19 Local Expert

A picturesque Parisian park, like many other gardens and parks here. In autumn it is especially beautiful.

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Parc de Bagatelle

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