Parc Montsouris

Parc Montsouris is a public park in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, at the southern edge of Paris directly south of the center. Opened 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, Baron 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. The park is 15.5 hectares in area, and is designed as an English landscape garden.

The Park contains a lake, a cascade, wide sloping lawns, and many notable varieties of trees, shrubs and flowers. It is also home to a meteorology station, a cafe and a guignol theater. The roads of the park are extremely popular with joggers on weekends.

The park 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 Rue de la Cité Universitaire; and to the west by Rue Nansouty and Rue Émile Deutsch-de-la-Meurthe.

The "Cité Universitaire" stop on the line on the RER B is located in the center of Parc Montsouris.

According to the official website of the Park and other sources, the name of the park came from an old windmill, called the Moulin de Moque-Souris, which in the 18th century stood not far from the park site at the crossroads of rue d'Alesia and rue de la Tomb-Issoire. Moque-Souris ("mocks-the-mice") was a common name for windmills in France at the time; it was a facetious name, suggesting that the miller dared the mice to find any grain inside. The name over time changed from moque-souris to montsouris.

Another possible origin of 'Montsouris' is common with the name of a former principal roadway, today's rue de la Tombe Issoire: after leaving the city to the south, it passed through a Roman-era cemetery that had fallen into disuse from the 4th century, and it may have been one these abandoned tombs that an influential 13th-century writer declared to be the burial place of "Ysoré", a defeated giant of popular legend. No matter the veracity of the story, many of the area's landmarks had taken the 'tombe Issoire' name by the 18th century, and if 'Issoire' emerged from 'Ysoré', 'Montsouris' could be a 'mont Ysoré' that evolved over time.

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Wikipedia