Pavillon de la Girafe

In 1827, France’s first giraffe walked 550 miles from Marseille to Paris over 41 days, her neck swaying above crowds of astonished onlookers. Zarafa, a diplomatic gift from Egypt’s Muhammad Ali to King Charles X, had already survived a journey by camel through Sudan and a Mediterranean crossing with her head poking through a hole cut in the ship’s deck. She sparked “giraffomania” in Paris, drawing 600,000 visitors her first summer. Today, a Moorish-style giraffe pavilion in Marseille’s abandoned zoo keeps her memory alive as a puppet theatre.

Built in 1858, the pavilion is the only structure from the old Parc Longchamp zoo whose construction date survives with any certainty, an achievement mostly attributable to a cement company’s paperwork rather than anything more romantic. The zoo closed in 1987 and was left to the weeds, though the pavilion was spared, granted historic status, and put back to work in 1993 as Théâtre de la Girafe. Its arches and tilework remain intact, its red door still announces something worth watching, and the marionettes inside have inherited a level of fame no giraffe since has managed to equal.