Underground & cool · Botanical garden · € · 5e · Latin Quarter
Jardin des Plantes
France's botanical garden, founded in 1626 as the royal medicinal beds and still run by the natural-history museum. The grounds are free: a long perspective of flowerbeds, an alpine garden, a rose garden, and a robinia planted in 1601, the oldest tree in Paris.
The walk costs nothing; the four glass Grandes Serres (~€7) and the 1794 menagerie are separately ticketed.
Getting there
- Jussieu710210 m · 4 min walk
- Place Monge7340 m · 6 min walk
- Cardinal Lemoine10420 m · 8 min walk
Walks that pass nearby
- Where the Writers Livedstop 2 of 6 · 380 m
Hemingway, 74 Rue du Cardinal Lemoine
Hemingway and his first wife Hadley rented a fourth-floor walk-up here from January 1922 to August 1923 — their first Paris apartment, no running water, no toilet. He wrote In Our Time on the kitchen table. There's a small plaque on the facade.
Look for the green plaque next to the door. The apartment is private; just stand on the cobbles opposite and read A Moveable Feast's opening pages on your phone. Hemingway's local café was the now-gone Café des Amateurs at the bottom of the hill.
- Markets of Parisstop 5 of 6 · 410 m
Rue Mouffetard
Roman-era road (it's been a thoroughfare for 2,000 years), market street since at least the 17th century. The lower stretch, descending from Place de la Contrescarpe, is the food market — the upper stretch is mostly bars.
Start at Place de la Contrescarpe (top) and walk down — the slope is the experience. Sundays before noon are the busiest. The Saint-Médard church at the bottom marks the end of the food street; the Eglise Saint-Étienne-du-Mont (Hemingway's 'good wide street') is a five-minute walk west.
Within a few minutes' walk
- Hotel MongeBoutique hotel€€€ · 5 minThirty rooms in an 1876 mansion between the Panthéon and the Jardin des Plantes, with Hungarian-point parquet, Carrara fireplaces and tropical wallpapers commissioned from Maison Deyrolle, the old Left Bank taxidermist. A small hammam and an honesty bar.
- Hammam de la Mosquée de ParisHammam€€ · 5 minThe 1920s bathhouse attached to the Grande Mosquée runs a marble steam circuit under a starred dome, finished with a sugared black-soap scrub and mint tea in the tiled courtyard.
- Arènes de LutèceRoman amphitheatre€ · 6 minA surviving 1st-century Roman amphitheatre sunk into the Latin Quarter, now an open public ground where locals play pétanque and kick footballs on the sand that once held gladiators.
- Le Buisson ArdentTraditional bistro€€ · 6 minA 1950s room with painted murals near the Jussieu campus, doing seasonal French cooking with more imagination than the price suggests. The weekday formula keeps the university crowd's tables full.
- Hôtel des Grandes ÉcolesGarden boutique hotel€€ · 9 minThree 19th-century houses around a tree-shaded garden where breakfast is taken in good weather; rooms keep their toile de Jouy and deliberately skip televisions.
- Familia HôtelBudget hotel€ · 9 minRun by the Gaucheron family, with hand-painted sepia frescoes of Paris monuments and flower-decked balconies; a few top-floor ones catch a sliver of Notre-Dame.
Landmarks nearby
The district · 5e
Latin Quarter — The student hillThe oldest quarter, Roman under the surface — the Panthéon, the Sorbonne, the Arènes de Lutèce, Rue Mouffetard's market hill. Bookish and steep, with cheap eats that have fed students for centuries.
Best for: Readers, walkers, and anyone who wants character and value over polish.
Everything we've verified in the 5e →How we verified this
Confirmed currently operating as of August 2026,cross-checked against 1 source:
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