"At the top of the list of wonders of the new Paris, one must, without any doubt, rank the park of Buttes-Chaumont", according to Delaforgue's Guide du promeneur. The "new Paris" referred to by the author is Napoléon III and Baron Haussmann's Paris. The author then praises the countless beauty spots of this "graceful Paris" that even "the least impressionable tourist does not tire of admiring." The gardens were opened 1867, ironically the same year as the city abattoir and livestock market at La Villette, also in the 19th arrondissement, highlighting the Emperor's contradictions in terms of urban plannings and addressing social issues.  

Today Les Buttes-Chaumont are still among the most beautiful gardens in Paris and also among the least polluted. However, a pleasing landscape it was not in 1864, when Napoléon III commissioned Adolphe Alphand to turn a dusty wasteland in the newly annexed territory of eastern Paris into a garden worthy of his capital, "les Tuileries du peuple". Unlike his wife, the Emperor was sensitive to the plight of the underprivileged, but he also hoped to avert social unrest by providing them with a decent environment. It took Alphand seven years to convert the lunar landscape into gardens of dramatic beauty, fit for the most extravagantly Romantic poet: quite a feat, for the site consisted of disused gypsum quarries, cleaned out after a century of intensive activity.

The quarries were known as les carrieres d'Amérique or du Mississippi, because their plaster was exported to North America. It took more than 1,000 workmen, 100 horses, 400 small trucks, two steam engines and much dynamite to prepare the ground, after which more than 200,000 cubic metres of earth had to be brought to the site. 5,000 metres of footpaths were then laid out, followed by an artificial lake which was fed by the waters of the Bassin de la Villette. Then came a brick bridge, then a suspension bridge, both linking the mainland with a dramatic cliff rising from the water. A grotto and a roaring waterfall followed and, to crown it all, an overpowering folly topping the cliff —a charmingly blatant copy of the Temple of the Sibylle in Tivoli.

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