After visiting Parc Monceau on one of our final days in Paris, I became quite curious about all the strange structures that were scattered around the park and decided to find out how they came to be.
The park was created as a garden in 1778 by Philippe d’Orleans, the Duke of Chartres. He wanted to create a garden in the romantic english style so he hired Louis Carrogis, known as Carmontelle, to turn his land into a pleasure garden. Carmontelle then set about building follies to surprise and amaze visitors including a small Egyptian pyramid, a roman colonnade, antique statues, a water lily pond, a Turkish tent, a farmhouse, a dutch windmill, a temple to mars, a minaret, an Italian vineyard, an enchanted grotto, and a medieval ruin. As a visitor I can say I was amazed by the part of that I saw.
As it turns out a folly is “an ornamental structure whose creation reflects a whimsical inclination on the part of the builder” or a structure where the appearance is the primary purpose. While follies first emerged in the late 16th century in England, they spread through Europe and were at the height of their popularity in the 18th and 19th century. Around this time wealthy young western europeans had taken to touring around Europe, particularly Italy and Greece, and were falling in love with both the ruins of ancient culture and their romantic ideas of the past as a whole. When these young aristocrats returned home they would then build replicas of many of the things they had seen in their gardens.
Some say that the building of follies stopped after the second world war, but if they’re simply a structure with touting form over function I think it may have simply transformed into installation art pieces.