The Spy's Gate Planes of the Meinau

Napoleon's spymaster bought a meadow here in 1806 and called it Meine Aue, my meadow. The name stuck to the whole district, which is why a Strasbourg suburb is called the Meinau. Charles-Louis Schulmeister, who had talked his way into the Austrian high command and fed it false information before Austerlitz, built a chateau on the ground in 1807 and 1808. Two plane trees stood at its gate. Everything else went. Schulmeister lost the estate in 1836, ruined. The chateau became a sugar refinery and was pulled down in 1873 after the city bought the land. The grounds opened as a public park in 1934 and were rebuilt into the seven hectares of Parc Schulmeister in 1971. The two planes are what is left of the entrance, still standing as a pair on the same spot. Whether they were Schulmeister's own planting or arrived with one of the later landscapings, no source says, so the pair carries no date. What is documented is the site: the city's register lists the trees, and the chateau's story is told the same way by local historians and by the park's own record. This one is a trip rather than a stop, 3.7 kilometres south of the old town and a tram ride out. Go for the story as much as for the trunks, then walk the park, which is one of the quieter big green spaces in Strasbourg.