Parc de l'île Saint-Germain, Urban park in Issy-les-Moulineaux, France.
The Parc de l'île Saint-Germain is a 21.5-hectare green space on the island of the same name in Issy-les-Moulineaux, Hauts-de-Seine. It holds several gardens with different characters, from a lavender garden of Mediterranean plants to a garden of wild field flowers, plus a snail-shaped discovery garden with a pond and an organic vegetable plot. At the island's prow stands Jean Dubuffet's monumental sculpture, the Tour aux figures.
The park was created in 1980 on land that the 1965 regional master plan (SDRIF) had earmarked for a port zone; mayors of Issy-les-Moulineaux, Boulogne-Billancourt and Meudon, with the Hauts-de-Seine department, blocked that project. Making the twelve-hectare park required demolishing thirty-five buildings, bringing in 45,000 m3 of topsoil and planting 1,500 trees and 3,500 shrubs. Eight hectares were added between 1993 and 1996, and 1.5 hectares more in 2015.
The park's gardens each carry a name tied to the island's past: the jardin antérieur is planted with fruit trees because monks of Saint-Germain-des-Prés were said to grow fig trees in their vegetable plots. In the jardin des messicoles, stone remains of a warehouse recall the island's industrial years. Since 2017 a Guignol puppet theatre performs in the shaded jardin clos.
The park is open daily and accessible via RER Line C to Issy-Val-de-Seine station or Tram T2 to Les Moulineaux station. Wearing comfortable walking shoes is advisable since the terrain varies and pathways have different surfaces.
Jean Dubuffet's 1988 Tower of Figures stands at the prow of the island, a 22-metre sculpture in his Hourloupe style of interlocking white, red, blue and black shapes. Its interior, painted the same way, can be visited on guided tours; the park's discovery garden was reworked when the tower's restoration began in 2019.
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