Luxembourg Gardens

Marie de' Medici was homesick. The Italian-born queen, widow of Henry IV, missed the Boboli Gardens of her childhood in Florence, so in 1612 she commissioned a 23-hectare park on the Left Bank modeled on them. Four centuries later, it's the most beloved park in Paris — the place where students study, old men play chess, children push toy sailboats across the octagonal fountain, and Parisians sit in the iconic green metal chairs and argue about philosophy.

Those green chairs are famous in their own right. They were introduced in the early 20th century, and their design is deliberate: they're heavy enough not to blow away, light enough to drag to your preferred spot, and they're never bolted down. This is radical park design — it gives people control over their own space, and it's been studied by urban planners worldwide as a model of how public furniture should work.

The park contains 106 statues, including a smaller replica of the Statue of Liberty (one of the original study models by Bartholdi), a Medici Fountain tucked into a grove of plane trees that's one of the most romantic spots in the city, and an apiary where beekeeping courses have been offered since 1856 — you can buy the honey at the annual harvest.

The French Senate meets in the Luxembourg Palace at the north end of the gardens. During World War II, the Luftwaffe used it as their Paris headquarters. The gardens are technically owned by the Senate, not the city, which is why they follow slightly different rules than other Paris parks — and why, for decades, the Senate jealously guarded the park's distinctive personality against various modernization attempts.