Description
The Tuileries Garden is the formal park between the Louvre and Place de la Concorde, in the heart of Paris: 25.5 hectares of French symmetry, long perspectives, ponds, statues and green chairs.
At the east end, near the Louvre, the Grand Carré has a circular pond ringed by 19th-century statues of seasons and ancient heroes, and the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, built by Napoleon to celebrate his victories. The long central alley runs west to an octagonal pond that looks over the Concorde.
The sculptures are a free museum. Rodin's The Kiss and Eve stand on the west terrace, Maillol's bronzes fill the Carrousel garden, and Auguste Caïn's Tiger Battling a Crocodile is one of the most dramatic animal scenes.
Two buildings of the garden are museums: the Jeu de Paume, an indoor handball court built by Napoleon III, now with contemporary art, and the Orangerie, where Monet's Water Lilies have hung since 1927. Two cafés, Very and Renard, keep the old tradition of a rendezvous.
The name comes from roof tiles. Before the royal garden, this land outside the city walls was full of tile works, the tuileries. In 1564 Catherine de' Medici bought it to build herself a new palace, with an Italian garden laid out by a Florentine.
A century later André Le Nôtre, the grandson of one of Catherine's gardeners, redrew it as a French formal garden. In 1667, at the request of Charles Perrault, the author of Sleeping Beauty, it opened to the public: the first royal garden to do so. Beggars, lackeys and soldiers excepted.
History walked through it. In 1783 the first free flight of a manned hydrogen balloon took off from here, watched by the king. In 1792 the king's Swiss Guards were massacred as they fell back across it. In 1871 the Communards set fire to the Tuileries Palace, and its ruins were pulled down in 1883.
At the east end, near the Louvre, the Grand Carré has a circular pond ringed by 19th-century statues of seasons and ancient heroes, and the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, built by Napoleon to celebrate his victories. The long central alley runs west to an octagonal pond that looks over the Concorde.
The sculptures are a free museum. Rodin's The Kiss and Eve stand on the west terrace, Maillol's bronzes fill the Carrousel garden, and Auguste Caïn's Tiger Battling a Crocodile is one of the most dramatic animal scenes.
Two buildings of the garden are museums: the Jeu de Paume, an indoor handball court built by Napoleon III, now with contemporary art, and the Orangerie, where Monet's Water Lilies have hung since 1927. Two cafés, Very and Renard, keep the old tradition of a rendezvous.
The name comes from roof tiles. Before the royal garden, this land outside the city walls was full of tile works, the tuileries. In 1564 Catherine de' Medici bought it to build herself a new palace, with an Italian garden laid out by a Florentine.
A century later André Le Nôtre, the grandson of one of Catherine's gardeners, redrew it as a French formal garden. In 1667, at the request of Charles Perrault, the author of Sleeping Beauty, it opened to the public: the first royal garden to do so. Beggars, lackeys and soldiers excepted.
History walked through it. In 1783 the first free flight of a manned hydrogen balloon took off from here, watched by the king. In 1792 the king's Swiss Guards were massacred as they fell back across it. In 1871 the Communards set fire to the Tuileries Palace, and its ruins were pulled down in 1883.