Gardens of the Trocadero

The gardens are located on the former grounds of the Visitandines of Chaillot convent, previously the park and Château of Chaillot, and to the southwest, on a small part of the Minimes of Chaillot convent grounds.

In 1787, the Farmers-General wall ran along the dividing wall between the Visitandines convent and the Minimes convent, placing the latter outside the City of Paris on the territory of the former village and then from 1790, the commune of Passy. These convents were closed in 1790, the buildings of the Visitandines were destroyed in 1794 by an explosion, and the lands were sold as national properties to various private owners. The lands of the former Visitandines domain were acquired by the State in 1811-1813 for the abandoned project of the Palace of the King of Rome.

This project and the construction of the Iéna Bridge between 1804 and 1813 anchored the site as a solemn place on an axis starting from the École Militaire on the left bank. The site was still the subject of numerous projects during the 19th century.

In 1824, the Restoration monarchy commissioned architect Antoine-Marie Peyre to design a set of Roman-influenced dwellings in a semi-circle around a large fountain topped with an obelisk commemorating the Battle of Trocadéro on August 31, 1823, where a French expeditionary force captured the Trocadéro fort, crushing the parliamentary regime in place to reinstate King Ferdinand VII on the throne. This complex was not realized.

In 1826, a spectacle including a reenactment of this battle took place, with the Chaillot hill representing the Trocadéro fort.

By metonymy, the Chaillot site with the square arranged in 1869 at the top and the gardens below refers to the Battle of Trocadéro.

Several unrealized projects were proposed to crown the hill, including a mausoleum on Napoleon's tomb by Antoine Étex in 1841, a monumental statue of Napoleon by Hector Moreau in 1841, a people's palace in 1848, and an arch of triumph designed by Gabriel Davioud in 1856.

The site remains a wasteland traversed by several roads: the rue des Batailles parallel to the Seine, connecting the Franklin barrier (approximately in line with the current Boulevard Delessert) to the part of this street in the Chaillot neighborhood (at the location of Avenue d'Iéna), and Avenue de la Rampe, which includes two symmetrical lanes climbing the hill to join an avenue situated in the middle of the current Place du Trocadéro, and an avenue extending from the Pont d'Iéna, forming a T with Rue des Batailles.

In 1860, the octroi wall was moved to the Thiers enclosure. The wall of the Farmers-General and the old octroi barriers, including the Franklin barrier and the Battles barrier (at the corner of Boulevard Delessert and the current Rue Le Nôtre, formerly known as the Sainte-Marie barrier, closed in 1845 at the location of Yorktown Square), and the new Sainte-Marie barrier (at the end of Avenue d'Eylau on Place du Trocadéro), having become unnecessary, were destroyed.

In 1867, the top of the hill was leveled by 3 meters to create the circular Place du Roi de Rome, which has been known as Place du Trocadéro since 1877, and a staircase was built to the southeast of this square in line with the Pont d'Iéna.

A wide avenue connecting Rue Delessert (a road that preceded the current Boulevard Delessert) to Avenue d'Iéna was laid out in the early 1860s. This avenue, closer to the Seine than Rue des Batailles, which it replaced, is surrounded by lawns.

It was the acquisition of land by the state in 1811-1813, followed by the earthworks carried out in the 1860s, that allowed for the construction of the Palais du Trocadéro on the Chaillot hill and the creation of the gardens below in 1878.

Engineer Adolphe Alphand, a specialist in Parisian gardens and waterfall staging, was responsible for these outdoor spaces. The gardens are organized around a waterfall. They feature several statues, including Auguste Caïn's Ox and Pierre Louis Rouillard's Horse with a Harrow, which face the Seine and the Champ-de-Mars palace built opposite by Léopold Hardy for the 1878 exhibition. During the exhibition, a large freshwater aquarium was created under the gardens, partly in former stone quarries.

Around the fountain are four bronze sculptures, The Horse with a Harrow by Pierre Louis Rouillard, The Young Elephant Caught in a Trap by Emmanuel Frémiet, The Rhinoceros by Henri-Alfred Jacquemart, and The Ox by Auguste Cain. Since 1985, the first three have been in Paris in front of the Musée d'Orsay, and the last one in Nîmes.

During the 1900 World's Fair, the Russian pavilion was set up on the right side of the garden because it was too large to be placed with the others on 'rue des Nations' at the Quai d'Orsay. Nicknamed the 'Kremlin of Trocadero', it housed, among other things, the sketch of the painting The Coronation of Nicholas II by Henri Gervex, now in the Musée d'Orsay.

Restructured in the mid-1930s, at the same time as the Palais de Chaillot was built, the Trocadéro Gardens retained the triptych "fountains/plantations/aquarium," maintaining a Second Empire style in the arrangement of the plant areas (winding paths, small waterfalls, rocks, bridges, etc.). However, the "stony" areas of the gardens owe much to the monumental architecture of the interwar period, for example, the Trocadéro Fountain (or "Fountain of Warsaw"): a series of cascading basins dominates a large basin whose water cannons form fifty-six jets that end their course in eight water stairs. The whole is arranged by the architect Roger-Henri Expert, assisted by Adolphe Tiers and Paul Maître. During the 1867 exhibition, a waterfall was located where the fountain now stands. During the 1900 Universal Exhibition, the pavilions of the French colonies and protectorates were installed in the gardens of the palace.

The gardens are dotted with a multitude of sculptures (to be compared with those of the same era at the Palais des Musées d'Art Moderne), most of which date from the 1930s and are commissions to numerous artist sculptors due to the crisis; "but, as a result of this dispersion, the stylistic unity and iconographic coherence are little assured," writes Pascal Ory. There are a dog and horse heads (by Georges Lucien Guyot) and a deer and a bull's head (by Paul Jouve) in gilded bronze at the top of the fountains, while in the stairs are installed four stone allegories (Flora and Pomona by Louis-Aimé Lejeune and Robert Wlérick, reclining, and The Man and The Woman by Pierre Traverse and Daniel Bacqué, standing).

Near the Seine are La Joie de Vivre by Léon Drivier and La Jeunesse by Pierre-Marie Poisson. Moving back towards the palace, on the upper terrace, there are two colossal bronze statues, more sovereign than virile: Hercules Taming the Bull of Crete by Albert Pommier on the Passy wing and Apollo Musagète by Henri Bouchard on the Paris wing. Less visible, two allegorical trilogies overlook the head pavilions on the side of the square: Human Knowledge by Raymond Delamarre and The Elements by Carlo Sarrabezolles; Pascal Ory judges, for these last two works, that they are "the poor integration of a subject, essentially intellectual, passing through allegory to a subject, essentially plastic, posed and imposed by architecture." There are also the monuments Aux combattants polonais by André Greck (1977) and À l'amiral de Grasse by Paul Landowski (1931).

The sloping paths along the basins are often used for roller sports like longboarding or rollerblading, with riders descending the slope, drifting, and performing more or less acrobatic figures. Tourists and Parisians often cool off in the basins in hot weather.

The Avenue des Nations-Unies cuts through the park twice. Vestiges of the 1937 exhibition, two underground passages allow crossing this avenue.

The fountain itself is surrounded by the following roads, named after sovereigns: from west to east, Avenue Albert-Ier-de-Monaco, Avenue Hussein-1er-de-Jordanie, and Avenue Gustave-V-de-Suède. Below the Parvis des Droits de l'Homme is also the Esplanade Joseph-Wresinski.

The Paris Aquarium - Cinéaqua is located there, on the Esplanade Bernard-Dupérier.

During the summer of 2021, the Trocadéro gardens were temporarily rearranged to host a fan zone for watching the Tokyo Olympic Games. On this occasion, the fountain was drained and transformed into a stadium.