Cascade du Bois de Boulogne

The Cascade du Bois de Boulogne is a feat of nineteenth century engineering designed to transform a former royal hunting ground into a public landscape. Emperor Napoleon the Third ordered its construction in the eighteen fifties as part of a grand plan to bring water and greenery to Paris. Baron Haussmann directed the project, which ultimately utilized four thousand cubic meters of rock brought in from the Forest of Fontainebleau and two thousand cubic meters of cement. The waterfall operates entirely by gravity, fed by water flowing from an upper reservoir lake down into a lower one. You can walk through artificial grottoes built behind the falling water, a feature intended to give visitors a view of the park through a curtain of spray.