Jardin des Champs-Élysées

The land you are walking through was once a marshy area used for growing vegetables for the markets of Paris. In the seventeenth century, the French queen Marie de Medici decided to transform these humble kitchen gardens into a shaded promenade lined with trees. André Le Nôtre, the legendary architect behind the gardens of Versailles, later expanded this vision in sixteen sixty-seven to create a grand thoroughfare. This was the origin of the formal design that eventually became known as the Champs-Élysées.