Darcy garden

The full story

At a time when several cholera epidemics were striking Dijon, the local engineer Henry Darcy went to fetch water from the Rosoir spring, in the upper Suzon valley, and brought it into town through a 12-kilometre underground aqueduct. In 1840, the water took three hours to reach the reservoir. It then served the town’s 29,000 inhabitants, and the network was also linked to the basin on Place Wilson. The City presents this achievement as the first drinking-water supply network in France.

Built from 1838 to 1840, the reservoir is hidden beneath the garden’s mound. It is a large cylinder 28 metres across holding 2,300 cubic metres of water: narrow stairs lead down to a circular vaulted cellar lined with arcades. Above it, the monument bears a bust of Darcy by the sculptor Jouffroy, made at the request of the mayor Victor Dumay. Its success brought the engineer swift fame: as early as 1858, the neighbouring esplanade became Place Darcy.

In 1880, the architect Félix Vionnois (1841-1902) laid out Dijon’s first public garden around the reservoir, in the Italian style. A balustraded terrace overlooks a lower area, and a double staircase, a fountain and a pool link the whole, with cascades and statues. The railings are by Jacques Mathiot, the grotto by the pool was carved by Jules Schanosky, and the Fountain of Youth is the work of Max Blondat. Between 1880 and 1900, Place Darcy took on its present look, a sign of the birth of leisure and tourism.

At the entrance, the people of Dijon greet “l’ours Pompon”, Pompon’s bear. François Pompon (1855-1933), born in Saulieu, used to watch the bears in the menagerie of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. He modelled them in clay on a small portable workshop strapped to his chest, so that he could walk while he worked! The Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon displays a marble reduction of his famous white bear.

The reservoir, the garden, its railings and the Fountain of Youth were listed as historic monuments on 2 March 2015. And the reservoir is still in use: it stores the water that irrigates the tram’s grassed tracks.