Photo taken behind the Medici Fountain, a hidden gem!
Out of all the places I’ve visited thus far in Paris, I find that I keep returning to the Jardin du Luxembourg. I’ve been four times in the past two weeks. As I wander along the graveled pathways – often with a pebble stuck in my shoe – I can’t help but imagine all the different people across time who have also visited the garden.
The garden doesn’t seem to change, even though the world does. I think of the families of people imprisoned there during the revolution, trying to communicate with their loved ones. I think of all the artists painting en plein air the same images that people take with their iPhones. People strolling through the garden, enjoying the same activities that have spanned across decades. I think of how many people have been proposed to or broken up with here. Or how many Parisian children grew up playing in the same playground? How many people have been pooped on by a pigeon here?
Le Faun dansant, Eugène Louis Lequesne, 1850.
I’d like to think that if this garden could talk, it would whisper. Like the wind through its leaves, it would speak in a hushed tone of the friends who picnicked here, the first dates, the elders who play pétanque.
Maybe it would talk about me.