Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes, the zoo on rue Cuvier since 1794

The Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes, on rue Cuvier, opened officially on 11 December 1794 at the initiative of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, superintendent of the garden. It took in the last animals of the royal menagerie at Versailles, among them the lion Woira and an Indian rhinoceros, then those of Le Raincy and of street showmen.

In 1826 it received Zarafa, the first giraffe ever shown in France. The nineteenth century gave it the rotunda, the bear pits, the reptile house and Alphonse Milne-Edwards’s great aviary, built for the 1889 Exposition universelle. During the siege of 1870 the elephants Castor and Pollux were eaten by hungry Parisians.

In 1934 the Vincennes zoo took the largest animals; a new monkey house and big cat house replaced the old buildings. From the 1980s the menagerie was restored and turned to small and medium-sized species, often endangered. Its buildings were listed as historic monuments in 1993.

Across some 5.5 hectares of the Jardin des Plantes, in the 5th arrondissement, the Muséum’s menagerie shows around six hundred animals of 189 species, including orangutans, red pandas, snow leopards and tree kangaroos.