Paris' 'New Gen' Zoo Looks Very Much Like Any Other Zoo

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Paris' 'New Gen' Zoo Looks Very Much Like Any Other Zoo

There's even a restaurant right in the middle of it, so visitors can point at animals while eating steak.

This post first appeared on ​VICE France

​After being closed for six years, the Paris Zoological Park finally re-opened its doors last April. Curious to know what their partnership with the Bouygues Construction company and the Caisse d'Epargne bank (who provide 94 percent of funding) came to, we made our way over there a little later – last month to be exact. Most media outlets had sold this project as a "new gen zoo" – namely, a zoo that would be more evolved than the rest of the silly zoos who keep animals in silly cages. This new zoo would be all about large open spaces and a wealthy fauna and flora. This new zoo has a restaurant right in the middle of it, so visitors can point at animals while eating steak.

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Like all zoos, this new zoo is packed with families. After paying 22 Euros [£18] to be admitted, parents and children are free to walk around laughing with and at each other. To justify the high admission price, park officials like to broadcast a message about how important the welfare of their animals is to them on the park speakers. In reality, the place smells like wet cardboard and looks like a movie set.

We walked around for a few hours, taking in the atmosphere as well as pictures of people taking pictures of animals on their phones. Here's a few of those photos.