Gloriette de Buffon

You are standing before the Gloriette de Buffon, an elegant metal pavilion that holds the distinction of being the oldest metallic structure in all of Paris. Built between seventeen eighty-six and seventeen eighty-seven, this belvedere predates the famous architectural ironwork of Gustave Eiffel by nearly a full century. It sits at the summit of a hill known as the Labyrinth, which is itself a historical curiosity. This mound was not formed by nature, but by the accumulation of centuries of rubble and waste cleared from the city’s streets during the fourteenth century.