The astonishing gardens of Paris can be ideal places to relax and to read. The trick is to find them. On spring and summer Sundays, the Jardin Tino Rossi, a sliver along the Seine, turns into an impromptu dance-a-thon. For more than two decades, an informal group of singers and dancers has been taking over amphitheaters, where they dance the musette until midnight.

A couple in the secluded Jardin Alpin part of the Jardin des Plantes.

The 17th-century Fountain of the Medicis is a peaceful oasis in the often bustling Luxembourg Gardens. It’s named after Marie de Medicis (Louis XIV’s grandmother), and inspired by the city of Florence.

 

 At the cafe-garden of the Petit-Palais, with its palm and banana trees and mosaic floors, marble tables and metal chairs offer the ideal setting to watch the museum’s stone walls change from buff to tawny yellow as the sun moves.

 

 A depiction of the poet Alfred de Musset next to the path to the Jardin de la Vallée Suisse.

 

The Hôtel-Dieu complex is a working hospital and has a formal garden-courtyard with sculptured 30-year-old boxwoods.

 

Luxembourg Gardens.