Olympics site was once center of Paris fashion, duels and prostitution

“The Bois de Boulogne was an important part of the Parisian lifestyle, providing a theater of appearances and a daily show,” said Jean-Michel Derex, author of a book on the park’s history. “It was very inspiring for Baudelaire, Zola, Maupassant, Balzac, Proust and many others.”

Officially inaugurated by French Emperor Napoleon III with the filling of its man-made lakes in 1854, the Bois triggered a social revolution. It was the first major public green space in the crowded, filthy and disease-ridden capital, and it expanded the range of leisure pursuits available to Parisians and brought a new mixing of the classes.

Denizens flocked there, strolling its meandering nature trails, rowing across ponds, taking in concerts, savoring the grandstand views at the Longchamp racetrack, exploring the new zoo, and dining at elegant chalet restaurants. But the main attraction was simply parading around its lakes and gardens, showing off haute-couture fashions, handsome horses and liveried carriages.

“It was the place to see and be seen,” said Derex.

The daily promenade of horse-drawn carriages was such a riveting event that it caused major traffic jams into the park and topped must-see lists in tourist guides. Each afternoon, thousands of spectators took in the flashy get-ups of the royals, bankers, playwrights, famous courtesans and visiting VIPs. Even the emperor frequently made the rounds.

“The drive into the Bois is a splendid spectacle,” wrote the Dublin Times.

“What a stream of open carriages, overflowing with voluminous gay [outfits], occupied the Parisian woods today,” reported London’s Penny Illustrated Paper, marveling over the “cosmopolitan world” Paris had become.

Inspired by London’s Hyde Park, the Bois outdid it in splendor. “The French beat us in parks,” lamented a British writer for the Glasgow Evening Citizen.

Artists including Édouard Manet and Berthe Morisot set up their easels to capture the racetracks, footbridges, aviaries and grottoes, while the panoramic beauty moved Mark Twain to write in “The Innocents Abroad”: “I will not describe the Bois de Boulogne. I cannot do it. It is simply a beautiful, cultivated, endless, wonderful wilderness. It is an enchanting place.”

The creation of the park was also a brilliant PR move by the new French emperor, Napoleon III, the plucky nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte.

A felon who had twice attempted to overthrow the king — after the second attempt, he was sentenced to life in prison, from which he escaped after six years — Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte became the first elected French president in 1848, when King Louis-Philippe fled the country after that year’s revolution.

However, continually blocked in his plans to extensively modernize Paris, President Bonaparte tossed his own government in December 1851, announcing the next year that, like his uncle, he would wear the imperial crown. He promised to bring order and prosperity to his subjects and to make Paris “the capital of all capitals” during this Second French Empire. Napoleon III’s first major move was to donate the Bois de Boulogne — a walled, private forest that for centuries had been the royal hunting grounds for French kings — to the city, with the condition that officials use municipal funds to renovate it.

And renovate they did, accomplishing engineering feats and landscaping marvels little known at the time. They created two artificial lakes connected by waterfalls, numerous ponds and miles of twisting trails, as well as glass pavilions, gazebos, amusement parks and enclosed botanical gardens. Even those who protested Napoleon III’s seizure of power, dubious financial practices and ridiculous wars — as well as his razing of old Paris to create wide, tree-lined boulevards designed by Georges-Eugène Haussmann — mostly applauded the opening of the Bois.

“Paris was then a medieval city, dank, without light, and there was no circulation of air,” said French urban designer Stéphane Malek, pointing to the epidemics that often swept through. After a cholera outbreak killed 19,000 people in six months in 1832, public health experts demanded that the cramped city be opened up, but until Napoleon III, little had been accomplished. The Bois de Boulogne, along with the subsequent Bois de Vincennes, Malek said, gave residents access to fresh, clean air. The two parks became known as the lungs of Paris.

Despite the picnics, boats, flowers, kids’ rides and theatrical productions, however, not all at the Bois de Boulogne was wholesome.

For one thing, the daily promenades put leaders in proximity to the public — as evidenced in 1867, when a disgruntled Polish immigrant shot at visiting Russian czar Alexander II as he traveled in a regal carriage alongside the French emperor.

For another, the Bois was a favored site for nobles and politicians, armed with swords or pistols, to meet for duels, which, despite having been outlawed, remained a popular way to resolve disputes throughout the 19th century. Even women were known to partake in the potentially lethal pursuit in the Bois de Boulogne.

What’s more, the secluded groves throughout the park attracted prostitutes — as hinted at in Manet’s painting “Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe.” Art historian Peter Gärtner writes in his book “Art and Architecture: Musée D’Orsay” that the painting “is not of a picnic in an urban forest, as the French title suggests. Instead, it highlights the prostitution that was widespread in the Bois de Boulogne, which was common knowledge in Paris, but which was a taboo subject.”

Nevertheless, for three-quarters of a century, the Bois remained one of Paris’s star attractions. The thrill of the daily promenade has long since faded, erased by the car. But the lush park that sparked a new opening-up of Parisian society is still adored for its beauty, restaurants, horse racetracks, running and biking trails, and Shakespeare Garden, which re-creates scenes from the Bard’s plays.

The Bois has retained nearly all of its natural holdings, save for the 21-acre strip where Roland Garros Stadium was built in 1928. In 2019, the stadium was expanded to include the 5,000-seat Simonne Mathieu Court, stretching into the Serres d’Auteuil botanical garden of the Bois de Boulogne. The move first met with outrage, until the design incorporated greenhouses, which wrap the new court on all four sides.

The stadium complex will showcase Olympian tennis from Saturday through Aug. 4. Boxing finals will be staged there from Aug. 6 to Aug. 10. And the Paralympics’ wheelchair tennis event will be there from Aug. 30 to Sept. 7.

Melissa Rossi is the author of six books about geopolitics. She has written for such platforms as Yahoo News, Outrider, AARP, Rolling Stone and Newsweek, and often covers historical oddities for her Substack, Rossi Reports.