The Jardin des Plantes began as a royal medicinal garden and grew into the botanical heart of France’s natural-history museum. Its formal paths and plant collections still connect public education with research, conservation, and the careful naming of living species.
Quick facts
A royal edict in 1635 fixed the site of the Jardin royal des plantes médicinales in Paris.
The garden opened to the public in 1640 with free lessons in botany, chemistry, and anatomy taught in French.
A decree in 1793 created the Muséum d’histoire naturelle, and the garden took the name Jardin des Plantes.
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Guide
The Jardin des Plantes is a botanical garden in Paris’s 5th arrondissement and the historic heart of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle. Its orderly beds are not simply decoration: the garden began as a place to grow useful medicinal plants, teach their properties, and make nature available for observation. The streets around it have changed, and the Bièvre River that once marked its edge now runs underground, but the garden still joins public promenade with scientific work.
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