The Jardin Rosa Mir (English: Rosa Mir Garden) is a garden located in the center of La Croix-Rousse quarter in the 4th arrondissement of Lyon, and created by Jules Senis. It is housed in a courtyard of the building at No. 83 Grande Rue de la Croix-Rousse. It can be accessed through a path located at No. 87 in the same street.
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This garden was created by Jules Senis (1913-1983), a tiler and bricklayer artisan, Spanish anarchist who had fled to France to escape the Spanish Civil War.[1] He was diagnosed with cancer, but recovered after several years in hospital. During his illness, he had vowed to build a garden if he managed to leave the hospital, and thus created the garden Rosa Mir, to which he devoted the last twenty-five years of his life.[2]
He dedicated this garden to his mother Rosa Mir Mercader.[2]
Plants that compose this garden are mostly geraniums, ivy, lemon trees, prickly pear,[3] roses, agaves and weeds.[4] The garden is made of many columns topped with succulent plants, gantries and ties decorated with thousands of seashells (oysters, scallops), various kinds of stones, coral, desert roses,[3] volcanic rocks and snails[5] that cover all surfaces. At the center of the garden, there is a kind of fountain of about three meters high, covered with multicolored stones.[6] On the left, an altar is dedicated to the Virgin Mary.
The garden has an area of 400 sqm.[7] The decor is inspired by the Spanish art, and seems to draw on the Antoni Gaudi's work[8] in Barcelona (Park Guel or the Sagrada Família). The originality of this garden for visitors often evokes Ferdinand Cheval's work,[2] although the garden is more of a mixture of floral structures and finely decorated combining minerals and plants.
An association was created around 1983 to prevent the garden would be destroyed.[8] It was listed in the supplementary inventory of the monuments historiques in 1987[9] and has the label Patrimoine du XXe siècle (20th-century heritage),[7] and has been the property of the City of Lyon since 1983. The garden is regularly frequented by visitors from around the world and was mentioned in Japanese publications.[8]
The journalist Pierrick Eberhard described the garden as a "kitsch masterpiece" which reflects "the extraordinary expertise in the service of the fixed idea of work".[4]
The garden is open every Saturday from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. from 1 April to 30 November.