Since 24 March 1993,[2] the entire garden and its contained buildings, archives, libraries, greenhouses, ménagerie (a zoo), works of art, and specimens' collection are classified as a national historical landmark in France (labelled monument historique).

Specialized buildings, such as a large Art Deco winter garden, and Mexican and Australian hothouses display regional plants, not native to France.

It was staffed by a group of "demonstrateurs", who lectured visitors, particularly future physicians and pharmacists, on botany, chemistry, and geology, illustrated by the garden collections.

The lecturers included the celebrated physician and anatomist Claude Perrault, who was equally famous as the architect; he designed the facade of the Louvre Palace.

At the same time, the greenhouses on the west and south were enlarged, to hold the plants brought back to France by numerous scientific expeditions around the world.

[4] One example was the group of coffee plants brought from Java to Paris, which were raised and studied by Antoine de Jussieu for their possible medical and commercial use.

[7] On June 7, 1793, in the course of the French Revolution, the new government, the National Convention, ordered a complete transformation of the former royal institutions.

It also received a number of important collections which had belonged to members of the aristocracy, such as a famous group of wax models illustrating anatomy which had been created by André Pinson.

[8] The Museum and gardens also benefited from the 1798 expedition launched by First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte to Egypt; the military force was accompanied by one hundred and fifty-four botanists, astronomers, archeologists, chemists, artists and other scholars, including Gaspard Monge, Joseph Fourier, and Claude Louis Berthollet.

[8] The holdings today include 6,963 specimens of the herbarium collection of Joseph Tournefort, donated on his death to the Jardin du Roi.

It became the home of animals brought back to France in scientific expeditions in the early 19th century, including a famous giraffe given to King Charles X by the Sultan of Cairo in 1827.

Working in the laboratories there, the chemist Eugene Chevreul first isolated fatty acids and cholesterol, and studied the chemistry of vegetal dyes.

[12] The Gallery of Paleontology and of Comparative Anatomy was opened in 1898, replacing structures built between 1795 and 1807, to contain and display the thousands of skeletons the museum had collected.

It was built to contain the immense zoological collections of the museum; the central hall is a landmark of iron construction, comparable to the Grand Palais and the Musée d'Orsay.

[14] The Grand Gallery of Evolution was designed by Jules André, whose other works in Paris included, in collaboration with Henri Labrouste.

It opened during the Paris Universal Exposition of 1889, though it was not finished as intended; it still lacks a grand facade on the side of rue Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire.

A series of medallions between the bays on the main facade overlooking the garden honors ten of the notable scientists who have worked in the Museum along with an allegorical statue of a woman holding an open book of knowledge.

Among the notable exhibits is the petrified trunk of bald cypress tree from the tertiary geological era, discovered in Essonne region of France in 1986.

[16] In front of the Gallery of Botany is the oldest tree in Paris, a "Robinier Faux Acacia" brought to France from America in 1601.

Between the statue and the Gallery is the Esplanade Mine Edwards, beneath which is the Zoothéque, the massive underground storage area for the museum's collections.

They replaced the earliest greenhouses, built on the same site in the early 18th century, to house the plants brought to France from tropical climates by French explorers and naturalists.

[22][23] A larger structure, the "Jardin d'hiver" (Winter Garden), covering 750 square meters, was designed by René Berger and completed in 1937.

The heating system keeps the interior temperature at 22 degrees Celsius year-round, creating a suitable environment for bananas, palms, giant bamboo, and other tropical plants.

[24] A large section alongside the formal garden, with an entrance on the Allee Bequrerel, belongs to the School of Botany, and is dedicated to plants that have medicinal or economic uses.

[26] The eight iron columns carry a roof in the shape of a Chinese hat, topped by a lantern with a frieze decorated with swastikas a popular motif in the period.

The top is inscribed with a tribute to Louis XVI, honouring his "justice, humanity, and munificence", as well as a quotation from Bouffon, in Latin, translated; "I only count the hours without clouds".

The Menagerie is the second-oldest public zoo in the world still in operation (following the Tiergarten Schönbrunn in Vienna, Austria), founded in 1752.

It formerly contained the large animals of the collection, including the elephants and the famous giraffe given to King Charles X of France, which lived there for twenty-seven years.

[26] The major structures in the Menagerie include the neoclassical Grand Volerie, built for flying animals by Louis-Jules André, the designer of the garden's central building, the Gallery of Evolution.

The Vivarium is a gallery by Emmanuel Pontremoli from 1926; it is a modernist update of a Classical Greek villa, with an Art Deco portico dating from 1926.