Tuileries Palace

Welcome to the twee-luh-ree, a spectacular expanse of greenery and art located squarely in the historic heart of Paris, stretching majestically between the vast complex of the Louvre Museum and the monumental Place de la…

Our story begins in the year fifteen sixty-four. The powerful queen consort, Catherine de Medici, widow of King Henry the Second, decided she required a new residence away from the dark, medieval fortress of the Louvre. …

Fast forward a century to the reign of the Sun King, Louis the Fourteenth. In sixteen sixty-four, the king commissioned the legendary landscape architect André Le Nôtre to completely redesign the Tuileries. …

As you wander off the central axis and into the shaded groves, the garden reveals itself as a spectacular open-air museum. Since its inception, the Tuileries has been populated by an ever-growing army of statues. …

The serene beauty of the Tuileries sharply contradicts its dark and violent political history. During the French Revolution, the Tuileries Palace ceased to be a luxurious retreat and became, for all intents and purposes, a gilded…

The final, fatal chapter for the Tuileries Palace was written not during the Revolution of seventeen eighty-nine, but nearly a century later, during the Paris Commune of eighteen seventy-one. Following France's devastating defeat…

Approaching the southwest corner of the gardens, elevated on the terrace overlooking the Seine, we find a building that represents the peaceful, artistic resurrection of the Tuileries in the twentieth century: the Musée de…

As our tour of the Tuileries Garden draws to a close, find a moment to sit upon one of the iconic, green metal chairs that are freely scattered around the Grand Bassin. This is a time-honored Parisian tradition. …