Paris Zoological Park

Listen for a moment. Under the hum of traffic on the edge of the Bois de Vincennes, there are other sounds. A bird calls from inside a glasshouse. Gravel crunches under strollers. Somewhere a baboon barks, sharp and sudden. Then, above the treetops, a grey rock face rises. It is far too large and far too steep for eastern Paris. You are standing at the Paris Zoological Park, which most Parisians simply call the Vincennes Zoo.

That great grey peak is the first surprise. It is not natural stone at all. It is a sculpted concrete shell over an internal frame, built in the 1930s to look like a mountain cliff. Locals call it the Grand Rocher, the Great Rock. At around sixty-five metres high, it has been a landmark of this corner of the city for generations. It can be seen from the lake, from the woods, and from the boulevards nearby.

To understand why a fake mountain stands here, go back to 1931. That year, Paris hosted a large Colonial Exhibition on the edge of these woods. It was a fair meant to celebrate France's overseas empire, and today it is looked back on very critically. The exhibition included a temporary zoo, and crowds loved it. The city decided to build a permanent park nearby. The new zoo opened in 1934.

The designers of that era followed a newer idea in zoo keeping. Instead of iron cages in neat rows, animals would live in open enclosures behind ditches and moats. Artificial rocks would give the scene a feeling of wild landscape. The Great Rock was the boldest expression of that idea. For much of the twentieth century, a visit to Vincennes meant looking up at animals climbing ledges against the sky.

Here is the second surprise. This is not the oldest zoo in Paris. That honour belongs to the menagerie in the Jardin des Plantes, on the other side of the city, which dates back to the late eighteenth century. Both places belong to the same institution, the National Museum of Natural History. So the zoo around you is part of a scientific museum, not only a place for a day out.

By the early 2000s, the concrete had aged badly. Pieces of the rock were crumbling, and many enclosures no longer met modern standards. In 2008, the zoo closed its gates completely. For several years, the site sat quiet behind fences. Then came a long and expensive rebuilding. When the park reopened in 2014, it was almost a new zoo, with the restored rock still standing at its heart.

The new layout is organised in a different way. Animals are not grouped by type, such as big cats in one place and birds in another. Instead, the park is divided into zones, each one based on a region of the world. Walk the paths and you move between landscapes. There is Patagonia in South America, the Sahel and Sudan in Africa, Europe, Guiana, and Madagascar. Each zone mixes animals and plants that share a home in the wild.

In the African plains zone, look for the giraffes. They are among the animals Vincennes is best known for, and their long necks often appear above the fences before the rest of them. Nearby, zebras, white rhinoceroses and other grazers share wide open ground. Lions live in this part of the park too. On a warm afternoon, you may find them stretched flat in the sun, doing almost nothing at all.

The Patagonia zone feels cooler and rockier. Here you can watch sea lions moving through their pool, sleek and fast underwater, clumsy on land. Pumas live in this area as well. They are quiet and easy to miss, so take your time. Scan the rocks and the shadows under the shrubs. Often a visitor stands at the glass for a full minute before spotting a cat that was there all along.

Then there is the great tropical glasshouse. Step inside and the air changes at once. It is warm and heavy with moisture, and it smells of wet soil and green leaves. Birds and small primates move through the plants above you. Below, in the water, look for the manatees, slow grey animals that seem to drift rather than swim. Lemurs from Madagascar live in the zone close by.

The European zone is a reminder that wild animals live close to home too. Wolves, wolverines and other creatures of the northern forests live here. They are often less famous than lions or giraffes, but they are just as interesting to watch. Many of the animals across the park take part in breeding programmes shared between zoos. These programmes aim to protect species that are threatened in the wild.

As you walk, notice the setting beyond the fences. The Bois de Vincennes is one of the two great woodland parks on the edges of Paris. Lake Daumesnil lies just a short walk away, with rowing boats and shady paths. Near the Porte Dorée stands a grand building from the same 1931 exhibition. Today it holds a museum of immigration history and a tropical aquarium, so the story of the zoo continues just outside.

The Great Rock remains the symbol of all of this. It was built for an older idea of the wild, then patched, then nearly lost, then carefully restored. Its texture shows the work of human hands if you look closely. There are seams, ridges and shaped surfaces that no real cliff would have. It is a piece of 1930s theatre that Paris decided to keep.

Before you leave, stop once more and look up at that grey peak above the trees. Listen again for the bird calls from the glasshouse and the voices of children on the paths. Around you, animals from five corners of the world live a short metro ride from the Eiffel Tower. As you walk back toward the woods, the rock will stay in view for a long time behind you.