Lac Daumesnil

Lac Daumesnil is a twelve-hectare masterpiece of nineteenth-century engineering. Emperor Napoleon the Third ordered its creation in the eighteen sixties to provide the working-class residents of eastern Paris with a grand recreational space that rivaled the luxury of the city's western districts. The lake is entirely artificial, carved out of land that previously served as a military training ground for the French army. Workers transformed this former parade field by sculpting the shoreline, creating winding paths, and filling the basin with water to mimic the romantic style of an English landscape garden.