Bois de Boulogne — Pré Catelan et Croix-Catelan

Paris (16e arrondissement)

Before becoming the green and fashionable lung invented by Napoleon III, the Bois de Boulogne was the dark forest of Rouvray, remnant of a woodland that once covered the whole west of Paris as far as Saint-Germain-en-Laye. In the 14th century this dense cover had an evil reputation: the Hundred Years' War filled it with bands of brigands, and the naturalist Pierre Belon was himself murdered there in 1564. It is from this unsettling forest that the legend of the Pré Catelan springs. According to tradition, a Provençal troubadour, Arnault Catelan, sent to the court of Philip the Fair, crossed the wood under royal escort; his guards, believing his casket full of treasure, killed him before discovering in it nothing but perfumes and elixirs. The king had a cross raised on the spot of the murder, the Croix-Catelan, which gave its name to the neighbouring garden. The very name "Boulogne" comes, moreover, from a pilgrimage: around 1319, a chapel dedicated to Notre-Dame-de-Boulogne-la-Petite was built in memory of a shrine in the Boulonnais. Today, beneath the foliage of the Pré Catelan, nothing remains of the medieval fear: only a shaded walk, the memory of a murdered troubadour and the quiet murmur of an almost forgotten Parisian legend.

Getting there : Free and open access all year round; métro Porte Dauphine or Porte Maillot

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound