Alexandra David Neel Garden

You are standing in the birthplace of one of the twentieth century's most daring explorers. Alexandra David-Néel was born here in Saint-Mandé in 1868. This garden honors a woman who spent her life defying the limitations placed upon her. Long before she became a world-renowned writer and scholar of Tibetan Buddhism, she was a restless child who felt confined by the borders of her own home. She eventually escaped those narrow limits to become the first European woman to enter the forbidden city of Lhasa in Tibet, completing a perilous journey across the Himalayas in the dead of winter. Her life serves as a constant reminder of the power of curiosity and the pursuit of the unknown.