Ménagerie du Jardin des plantes

The Ménagerie du Jardin des plantes occupies a distinct, walled-off space with low, circular enclosures and ornate iron gates that date back to the French Revolution. It opened in seventeen ninety-four when the royal menagerie at Versailles was dismantled and its surviving animals were moved here for scientific study. When a rhinoceros arrived in eighteen seventy-one, Parisians reportedly ate it during the Siege of Paris, but the small, historic enclosures remain largely as they were when zoology was still finding its feet.