Parc Montsouris is one of the four large urban public parks, along with the Bois de Boulogne, the Bois de Vincennes and the Parc des Buttes Chaumont, created by Emperor Napoleon III and his prefect of the Seine, Georges-Eugène Haussmann, at each of the cardinal points of the compass around the city, in order to provide green space and recreation for the rapidly growing population of Paris.

[2] The park contains a lake, a cascade, wide sloping lawns, as well as many notable varieties of trees, shrubs and flowers.

Cité Universitaire station on RER B is located in the southern part of Parc Montsouris, where it connects to Île-de-France tramway Line 3a.

[3][4] Moque-Souris ("mocks-the-mice") was a common name for windmills in France at the time; it was a facetious name, suggesting that the miller dared the mice to find any grain inside.

[5] Another possible origin of 'Montsouris' is common with the name of a former principal roadway, today's rue de la Tombe Issoire: after leaving the city to the south, it passed through a Roman-era cemetery that had fallen into disuse from the 4th century,[6] and it may have been one these abandoned tombs that an influential 13th-century writer declared to be the burial place of "Ysoré", a defeated giant of popular legend.

[9] The park was built by Jean-Charles Adolphe Alphand, the engineer who headed the service of promenades and plantations created by Georges-Eugène Haussmann, with the assistance of city architect Gabriel Davioud and horticulturist Jean-Pierre Barillet-Deschamps.

Every feature of the park was designed to create an idealized natural landscape, with space for both relaxation and recreation, which could be enjoyed by all classes of Parisians.

In October 1897, the park was the setting of secret meetings between some of the figures involved in the Dreyfus Affair, including Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy and Max von Schwartzkoppen.

In 1942, during the German occupation, one of the main monuments of the park, an 1893 allegorical statue of the French Revolution by sculptor Auguste Paris, was taken away and melted down for its bronze.

The main In the lower section of the park, an island in the middle of a tiny lake provides sanctuary to forty species of wild ducks, geese, herons, and other migratory birds.