Amy Toensing

National Geographic: Paris Parks

A woman strolls along the Promenade Plantée, a five km long park built on an abandoned 19th-century railroad viaduct in eastern Paris.
  
Friends meet on a lawn below Sacré Coeur for accordion music and laughs.
   
A couple takes a stroll through the Square du Vert-Galant, on the western tip of Île de la Cité in the Seine.
     
  
Newlyweds and other couples sit at an outside cafe in the Jardin du Luxembourg. This park holds the garden of the French Senate.
   
Members of the community garden, Jardin Nomade, enjoy homemade soup during a monthly dinner. The garden was built on a vacant lot and offers neighborhood residents small plots for growing vegetables and flowers as well as a place to socialize.
   
Ice skaters make their way around a rink set up for winter in the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, the square in front of Paris's City Hall. The square is not only a center for city government but a social center as well.
     
  
A young girl gets help from her father to bundle a bouquet of flowers growing on the lawns of Parc de Bagatelle, located in Paris's largest parks, the Bois de Boulogne.
   
Visitors stroll through the 17th-century Jardin de Tuileries leading to the Musée de Louvre in the center of Paris.
   
An artist tilts for the last drop of wine from his glass in La Place du Tertre. At the beginning of the 19th century painters such as Utrillo worked there. Today, over 280 painters sell their work and make portraits in the square.
     
  
   
Couples talk while taking in the view from the Temple de Sibylle in the center of Parc des Buttes-Chaumont.
   
A group of men meet every afternoon to play checkers in the Square Léon Serpollet in the 18th-arrondissement of Paris.
     
  
Neighborhood kids play soccer in Square Léon, an 18th-arrondissement park that offers relief from its urban surroundings with herb and vegetable gardens, fountains, Ping-Pong tables, children's play equipment, and an outdoor reading area in a quiet patch of woods.
   
A girl runs through a maze built along the Promenade Plantée, a five km path built on an abandoned train track running through Paris.
   
A couple embraces on the Pont des Arts, a pedestrian bridge across the Seine in the center of Paris.
     
  
A transgender sex worker works the streets that run through the Bois de Boulogne, a wooded park on the outer limits of the city of Paris. Bois de Boulogne is known for its beautiful green spaces in the day and sex workers at night.
   
A lone man walks through Place Dauphine, a small triangular plaza on Île de la Cité.
   
A woman and her poodle share a moment in the Parc du Champ de Mars, one of the few parks in Paris that welcomes humans and their canine companions.