Parc zoologique de Paris, the Bois de Vincennes zoo since 1934

The Parc zoologique de Paris, in the Bois de Vincennes off avenue Daumesnil, was opened on 2 June 1934 by President Albert Lebrun. Conceived by the geologist Paul Lemoine, director of the Muséum, and built by the architect Charles Letrosne, it relieved the cramped menagerie of the Jardin des Plantes.

Following Carl Hagenbeck’s zoo in Hamburg, the animals lived without bars, on plateaux and rockwork. The 65-metre Great Rock towered over the woods. The zoo housed the elephant seal Goliath and the panda Yen Yen, given by Zhou Enlai to Georges Pompidou in 1973, who lived there until 2000.

The concrete rocks, built to last fifty years, crumbled. Closed to be entirely rebuilt, the park reopened on 12 April 2014 under its present name, keeping the Great Rock, the vulture aviary and the old Saint-Mandé entrance.

The Muséum’s zoo now shows more than three thousand animals of 275 species across five biozones, Africa and the Sahel, Madagascar, Amazonia and Guiana, Patagonia and Europe, with a sixteen-metre tropical glasshouse, on the edge of the 12th arrondissement.