Mosque of the Bois de Vincennes
The Mosque of the Bois de Vincennes (French: Mosquée du Bois de Vincennes), also known as the Mosque of the Colonial Garden Hospital or Nogent Mosque, was a wooden mosque built in 1916 in the Bois de Vincennes near Paris. It was the first mosque on the French mainland since the 8th century and was created during World War I to serve Muslim soldiers and as a counterpropaganda measure against German claims about Islam.
Designed by architect M. Péni, the mosque was completed and officially opened on 14 April 1916, with dedication prayers led by two imams. After the war, the mosque fell out of use in 1919 and was demolished in 1926, around the time the Grand Mosque of Paris opened.
The nearby Colonial Garden had originally been a trial garden for plants from the French empire and was turned into a hospital in 1914–1919, the Hôpital du jardin colonial de Nogent-sur-Marne, which treated nearly 5,000 wounded soldiers, most of them North African and Muslim.
In 1929 the grounds, including the Bois de Vincennes, were transferred to Paris’s 12th arrondissement. The site today is the Jardin d'agronomie tropicale de Paris, and several pavilions and monuments were renovated in the 2010s. A commemorative stone stele and panel mark the memory of the former mosque.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 19:15 (CET).