Verniquet Grand Amphithéâtre of the Natural History Museum.
In the Botanical Garden in Paris – Jardin des Plantes – is the Verniquet Grand Amphithéâtre of the Natural History Museum.
The famed French architect Edmé Verniquet (1727-1804) from Burgundy was the son of a surveyor to the King. Edme’s father Germain Verniquet and his mother Marie Béguin had 16 children. When his father died in 1751 at the age of 57, Edmé took over the business at the age of 24, married Marie Lambert in 1763 at the age of 36, and had three children.
They moved to Dijon where Edmé met French naturalist and botanist Georges-Louis Leclerc, the Count of Buffon (1707-1788). Count Buffon asked Edmé to help him develop the King’s Royal Garden of Medicinal Plants, which is now the Jardin des Plantes (named during the French Revolution of 1789-1799). So, Edmé moved to Paris in 1772 at the age of 45.
At the Royal Garden of Medicinal Plants, which Count Buffon had been managing since 1739, Edmé enlarged the King’s cabinet building in 1780 and began construction of the botany amphitheatre in 1787.
He built a neoclassical building with a portico and a triangular pediment. Architect Jacques Molinos enlarged it in 1794 to house laboratories. On the frontispiece is a relief symbolizing science and a clock with two dials, made by Paute de Bellefontaine in 1790 and restored in 2000.
The 18th century building is now a conference hall accommodating up to 600 people. In its time, it was the amphithéâtre for teaching botany. Professors of botany over the years included Antoine de Jussieu, Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Georges Cuvier, Louis Joseph Gay-Lussac, Claude Bernard, Henri Becquerel, and Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre.
The building is now called the Verniquet Grand Amphithéâtre of the Natural History Museum.
