Paris - Hôtel Biron Gardens - 7me

Plate LVIII - Gardens of the Hotel Biron

I thought I had planned a sensible itinerary for my stay in Paris. Visiting Les Invalides and the Hôtel Biron on two consecutive days, it was only when I saw the dome of Les Invalides above the hedges of the Hotel Biron gardens that I realised how close they are (very). I obviously hadn’t done a good enough job of familiarising myself with my maps of Paris.

The hotel is surrounded by some three hectares of grounds; unusual for the times, but Hôtel Biron was without question the best address in the mainly suburban neighbourhood. A 1752 plan of the house shows how the gardens were designed, with matching parterres, and gravelled, shaped compartments. Tightly clipped conical shrubs (one of which can be seen the image), a feature of French gardens popular to this day lined the central gravel walk. Some of the formality was removed by Biron in favour of a more English park like landscape, a character remaining, and providing an excellent showcase for some of Rodin’s larger works including the Thinker, The Burgers of Calais, his brilliant and brooding statue of Balzac, and a cast of Rodin’s uncompleted final work the Gates of Hell - doors commissioned for the then planned Museum of Decorative Arts - illustrating scenes from Dante’s Inferno.