Le Parc De Saint-Cloud

Of the sumptuous domain of Saint-Cloud, place of sumptuous parties, only a park remains today. Christophe Pincemaille, historian, and Eric Sander, heritage photographer, reveal the soul of this place and invite you to walk through the alleys of a park where so many walkers, amazed by the groves and waterfalls, have been ecstatic about the beauty of the site and the exceptional views it offers over the capital and the loop of the Seine. The author shows how Saint-Cloud surpasses Versailles, to the point that Louis XIV, who had offered the estate to his brother Monsieur (who forbade the lumberjacks to cut down his friends' trees) came to prefer it to his own gardens.

Throughout the pages, and through the many photographs, the reader plunges into the memory of the places marked by the great autumn festival, with its guinguettes, its attractions, its balls, its fireworks, which since the Middle Ages, every year in September, made the people of Paris rush. A specialist in Napoleonic history, Christophe Pincemaille recalls Napoleon leaving his palace in the evening to slip into the crowd and enjoy a moment of popular joy. He evokes Napoleon III, in July 1870, boarding a train from his private station to go to war...