Le Marronnier bicentenaire du Jardin public

Cambrai

When the town of Cambrai decided, in 1860, to turn part of its military esplanade into a public garden, it called on Jean-Pierre Barillet-Deschamps, the landscape designer who had just redesigned the Buttes-Chaumont and the Bois de Boulogne for Paris. It was at this time that this horse chestnut took root, well before the artificial grottoes and the English-style garden that would enrich the park at the turn of the 20th century. Two centuries on, its sprawling branches make it, in the town's own words, "the oldest tree in the public garden" — a centuries-old patriarch that has come through the successive reconstructions and redevelopments of the park. Every spring, its candle-like white blossom draws strollers beneath its immense crown, while autumn carpets its feet with brown husks. A discreet witness to the history of Cambrai, it embodies on its own the living memory of a garden designed to offer the people of Cambrai a green lung as they emerged from the dismantled fortifications.

Getting there : Jardin public of Cambrai, town centre, Nord

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

Ambient sound