Jardin des Deux Rives, Cross-border park between Strasbourg, France and Kehl, Germany.
The Jardin des Deux Rives is a park stretching across the Rhine River between Strasbourg and Kehl, encompassing around 150 hectares of green space. The grounds feature walking paths connecting different sections and themed garden areas where visitors can wander and observe the river landscape.
The French bank held a hippodrome built in 1925, used by the Wehrmacht during the Second World War; in the 1960s it became the Parc du Rhin, with an outdoor pool converted into the Océade water park in 1986 and closed in 1996. Michel Krieger proposed a cross-border garden in 1995, and the landscape architect Rüdiger Brosk won the competition in 1999. The garden and Marc Mimram's 387-metre footbridge opened on 23 April 2004 with the Landesgartenschau.
Since 2005 the Orchestre philharmonique de Strasbourg has held a summer open-air concert in the park, the Symphonie des Deux Rives. On the German bank a path of 17 steles, the Biblischer Garten, sets Old Testament motifs on the left and New Testament motifs on the right, ending at an Ökumenischer Meilenstein.
The park is open daily and provides parking options on both sides of the river for visitors arriving by car. A pedestrian bridge connects the French and German sections, making it easy to cross between them without extra walking.
The bridge's two decks meet on a platform mid-river, and the shorter one is reserved for pedestrians while the longer one also carries cyclists and wheelchairs. Its total length is 387 metres. At the 2009 NATO summit, Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy met at that central platform, and the bridge appeared on the summit logo.
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