Bois de Boulogne

This guide to the Bois de Boulogne in Paris starts in 1814, when forty thousand occupying British and Russian soldiers stripped these woods bare for firewood, leaving a wasteland of stumps. It follows Napoleon III, who had spent years in exile walking London's Hyde Park, as he hands engineer Jean-Charles Alphand a five-year brief to replant four hundred twenty thousand trees and dig two connected lakes by hand. Along the way it points to the Longchamp Racecourse and Roland Garros, both still tucked inside the same woods. Walk any path far enough and the city disappears entirely.