A splendidly shady retreat on a baking hot day, the gardens surround the house of Albert Kahn, who devoted the wealth derived from his banking career to a variety of philanthropic causes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Among many other projects he employed a number of photographic teams to go around the world documenting the lives of many different peoples in the hope of engendering internationalist spirit;
many of the photos are in startlingly good early colour techniques.
His gardens were developed in much the same spirit, drawing inspiration from Japan, from his native Alsace, traditional French and English styles and so on, not all at their best all the time, but still presenting plenty that is striking and beautiful:
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