| Fronting onto rue de Vaugirard, Paris's longest street, the Palais du Luxembourg was constructed for Marie de Médicis, Henri IV's widow, to remind her of the Palazzo Pitti and Giardino di Boboli of her native Florence. Today it is the seat of the French Senate and its lovely gardens (open roughly dawn to dusk) are the chief lung of the Left Bank, with formal lawns and floral parterres dotted with trees – some of which are kept in giant pots, and taken inside in winter. The gardens get fantastically crowded on summer days, when the most contested spot is the shady Fontaine de Médicis in the northeast corner. Most of the lawns are out-of-bounds but metal chairs are liberally distributed around the gravel paths, and if you can find a clearing among the hundreds of young bodies you can lie out on the grass of the southernmost strip. Alternatively, there's a delightful tree-shaded café roughly 100m northeast of the pond. Children rent toy yachts to sail on the central round pond, but the western side is the more active area, with tennis courts, donkey rides, a large children's playground and the inevitable sandy area for boules. Sculptural works are scattered around the park, including an 1890 monument to the painter Delacroix by Jules Dalou and a suitably bizarre homage to the Surrealist poet Paul Eluard by the sculptor Ossip Zadkine, more of whose works can be seen in the nearby Musée Zadkine. The quieter, wooded southwest corner ends in a miniature orchard of elaborately espaliered pear trees whose fruits grace the tables of senators or, if surplus to requirements, are given to associations for the homeless. Temporary art exhibitions take place in the Orangerie (entrance from 19 rue de Vaugirard, opposite rue Férou), as does the "Expo-Automne", held annually in the last week of September to show off fruits and floral decorations, many grown in the Luxembourg's own gardens and hothouses.
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