Square Montholon is the largest green space in the 9th arrondissement, measuring 4571 square meters. The space was originally the garden of the estate of Charles-Henri Sanson, an executioner of France, who came from a famous family of executioners operating in Paris from 1688 to 1847. It was transformed into Square Montholon in 1863 and now hosts different bird species and native plants, and emphasizes the importance of wildlife protection. There are two oriental plane trees that are each over a century old and are now over 30 meters tall. The area itself is bordered with entrances near each corner, and Louis-Philippe-style fencing, a Victorian-style of picket fencing used frequently in Parisian gardens.
While I had done research on Square Montholon before arriving in Paris, it was nothing like I expected it to be. The square was small and intimate but had so much packed into every nook and cranny. As I turned and took in my surroundings, I saw something I didn’t read about or see in the research I did. Towards the center of Square Montholon is a statue, Les Catherinettes by Julien Lovieux, created in 1908, depicting four young women celebrating Saint Catherine’s Day. The holiday, occurring on November 25th, is a day for unmarried women of the age of 25 and above (otherwise known as ‘Catherinettes’) to pray to Saint Catherine to find a husband. While the holiday started in the 10th century, French milliners popularized it in the early 1900s as a way to display extravagant hats, customarily using green and yellow to symbolize wisdom, faith, and success. The tradition has developed and changed over time, but is still celebrated today with over the top, work of art, hats.
As I looked at the young women before me, I couldn’t help but think about all of the working girls who may have walked through the spot I was standing in. The women in the statue looked so joyful, linking arms and practically falling over each other while walking. Coming to Paris with my own group of girls, I couldn’t help but feel like I knew the ones made of stone. I love that in a city with so much history and so many lives lived, I can find common ground with people who walked the grounds 100 years before me. It felt ironic that what was previously the garden of an executioner had become a beautiful community space—an incredibly bright future for a place with such an interesting and complicated past.
The square is a peaceful escape from the rest of the city, and even with its small size it is not cramped, or infected with the noise right outside its gates. The sounds from the streets surrounding the park were drowned out by rustling trees and birds chirping, in order to create the quiet space I sat within. The number of colorful birds that I saw above, flying from branch to branch, felt disproportionate to the amount of land available to them. Despite the fact that there was nothing keeping them there, they all seemed settled within the square. I found so much peace within the square, and couldn’t help but be taken by the community I felt sitting in such a beautiful public space. I wondered how many girls sat in that square thinking the same, and listening to the birds.
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