It's a scene straight out of Harry Potter, a room filled with magical creatures preserved in time. In Paris, Deyrolle is a legendary shop-museum hybrid, nestled in the heart of the 7th arrondissement. Founded in 1831 by Jean-Baptiste Deyrolle, a naturalist who sought to create a place of learning dedicated to flora and fauna, it has enchanted generations of visitors. Among them was a five-year-old Prince Louis Albert de Broglie, a French nobleman who stood in awe of the space around him.
Some three decades later, in 2001, de Broglie purchased the struggling establishment, which suffered a period of decline after the Deyrolles left the business in the late 1970s. He vowed to return it to its former glory.
Deyrolle has enchanted generations of visitors.
" Deyrolle seeks to understand the living – to reshape the world in order to preserve it and to embrace its evolutions and revolutions," de Broglie writes in A Parisian Cabinet of Curiosities: Deyrolle, a new tribute to the shop's legacy due out Dec. 5. Nicknamed Le Prince Jardinier for cultivating the largest tomato conservatory in France (with over 500 varietals), de Broglie's love of nature was just what Deyrolle needed to re-establish itself as one of Paris's finest treasures, a space he likens to a miniature natural history museum.
For de Broglie, conservation is key to understanding the fragility and preserving the balance of our planet. "Nature, a mystery of evolution, teaches us so much about all things, like a lesson on what came before us, bringing us the air, the water, the nourishing earth, the magnificent diversity essential to this symbiosis, in almost flawless co-operation," he writes. It's also, he says, a source of stimulus for more creative visitors. "Deyrolle is a modern Noah's Ark," he says.
A Parisian Cabinet of Curiosities: Deyrolle, $47 at bookstores. For more information, visit www.rizzoliusa.com.
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