The Tuileries

The Tuileries Garden(French: Jardin des Tuileries) is a public garden located between the Louvre Museum and the Place de la Concorde in the 1st arrondissement of Paris.

In July 1559, after the death of her husband, Henry II, Queen Catherine de Medicis decided to move from her residence at the chateau of Tournelles, near the Bastille, to the Louvre Palace, along with her son, the new King, Francois II.

At the time there was an empty area bordered by the Seine on the south, the rue Saint-Honore on the north, the Louvre on the east, and the city walls and deep water-flled moat on the west.

Catherine acquired more land and began to build a new palace and garden on the site.

The garden of Catherine de Medicis was an enclosed space five hundred metres long and three hundred metres wide, separated from the new chateau by a lane. It was divided into rectangular compartments by six alleys, and the sections were planted with lawns, flower beds, and small clusters of five trees, called Quinconces; and, more practically, with kitchen gardens and vineyards.

The Tuileries was the largest and most beautiful garden in Paris at the time, Catherine used it for lavish royal festivities honoring ambassadors from Queen Elizabeth I of England and the marriage of her daughter, Marguerite de Valois, to the future Henry IV.

King Henry III fled Paris in 1588, and the gardens fell into disrepair. His successor, Henry IV  (1589?1610), and his gardener, Claude Mollet, restored the gardens and built a covered promenade the length and a parallel alley planted with mulberry trees, where he hoped to cultivate silkworms and start a silk industry in France.

Created by Catherine de Medicisas the garden of the Tuileries Palace in 1564, it was first opened to the public in 1667, and became a public park after the French Revolution.

In 1610, at the death of his father, Louis XIII, age nine became the owner of the Tuileries Gardens. It became his enormous playground - he used it for hunting, and he kept a menagerie of animals.

The area between the palace and the former moat of Charles V was turned the "New Garden," with a large fountain in the center.

On the north side of the gardens, Marie de Medicis established a school of riding, stables, and a covered manege for exercising horses. When the King and court were absent from Paris, the gardens were turned into a pleasure spot for the nobility.

In 1630 a former rabbit warren and kennel at the west rampart of the garden were made into a flower-lined promenade and cabaret.

She decided that she would build a new palace there for herself, separate from the Louvre, with a garden modeled after the gardens of her native Florence.

Though Henry IV never lived in the Tuilieries Palace, which was continually under reconstruction, he did use the gardens for relaxation and exercise.

Since the 13th century this area was occupied by workshops, called tuileries, making tiles for the roofs of buildings. Some of land had been acquired early in the 16th century by King Francois I.

In the 19th and 20th century, it was the place where Parisians celebrated, met, promenaded, and relaxed.

Catherine commissioned a landscape architect from Florence, Bernard de Carnesse. to build an Italian Renaissance Garden, with fountains, a laybrinth, and a grotto, decorated with faience images of plants and animals, made by Bernard Palissy, who Catherine has ordered to discover the secret of Chinese porcelain.

The daughter of Gaston d'Orleans and the niece of Louis XIII, known as La Grande Mademoiselle, held a sort of court in the cabaret, and the "Garden Neuf" of Henry IV (the present day Carousel) became known as the Parterre de Mademoiselle."

He also built a rectangular basin 65 metres by 45 metres with a fountain supplied with water by the new pump called La Samaritaine which had been built in 1608 on the Pont Neuf.

In 1652 "La Grande Mademoiselle was expelled from the chateau and garden in 1652 for supporting an uprising, the Fronde, against her cousin, Louis XIV. Source: Wikipedia.