Parc Monceau

This guide to Parc Monceau in Paris opens with André-Jacques Garnerin's landing here in 1797, stepping off a balloon a thousand meters up with only a silk canopy to slow him down. It follows Philippe d'Orléans, the wealthy cousin of Louis XVI who built this folly garden of windmills, pyramids and pagodas for his own amusement, and the turn his fortunes took during the Revolution. Find the Naumachie pond, where a half-circle of Corinthian columns was designed to look like a ruin from the very start.