Parc de Belleville

The wooden playground structures at the top of the Parc de Belleville slope sit on land that once held a chaotic mess of plaster quarries and windmills. In the nineteenth century, the hillside was a steep, unstable tangle of paths and shacks known as the Couronnes. Engineers finally tamed the incline in the nineteen eighties, carving out the current terraced gardens and the long, cascading water feature that cuts straight through the center of the park toward the city below.