Parc Montsouris

Parc Montsouris
Alley in Parc Montsouris
Type	Urban park
Location	14th arrondissement, Paris
Coordinates	48°49′20″N 2°20′18″E / 48.82222°N 2.33833°E / 48.82222; 2.33833 (Parc Montsouris)
Area	38 acres (15 ha)
Created	2 October 1875
Operated by	Direction des Espaces Verts et de l'Environnement (DEVE)
Status	Open all year
Public transit access	Located near the RER station Cité Universitaire

Parc Montsouris is a public park situated in southern Paris, France. Located in the 14th arrondissement, it was officially inaugurated in 1875 after an early opening in 1869.

Parc Montsouris is one of the four large urban public parks, along with the Bois de Boulogne, the Bois de Vincennes and the Parc des Buttes Chaumont, created by Emperor Napoleon III and his prefect of the Seine, Georges-Eugène Haussmann, at each of the cardinal points of the compass around the city, in order to provide green space and recreation for the rapidly growing population of Paris.^[1] The park is 15.5 hectares in area, designed as an English landscape garden by Jean-Charles Adolphe Alphand.^[2]

The park contains a lake, a cascade, wide sloping lawns, as well as many notable varieties of trees, shrubs and flowers. It is also home to a meteorology station, a cafe and a guignol theatre. The roads of the park are popular with joggers on weekends. Parc Montsouris is bounded to the south by Boulevard Jourdan and the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris (CIUP), to the north by Avenue Reille, to the east by Rue Gazan and the Rue de la Cité Universitaire and to the west by Rue Nansouty and Rue Émile Deutsch-de-la-Meurthe. Cité Universitaire station on RER B is located in the southern part of Parc Montsouris, where it connects to Île-de-France tramway Line 3a.