Paris 1st - métro: Tuileries or Concorde
Former royal garden when the Louvre was the home of French kings, the
Jardins des Tuileries have recently been embellished and are very pleasant
today. Nice view over the Louvre, place de la Concorde and Musée d'Orsay.
Tuileries Palace before 1871 - View from the Louvre courtyard, and after the
fire.
Tuileries Palace before 1871 - View from the Tuileries Gardens
View from the Louvre courtyard showing the joining of the Louvre
(foreground) and the Tuileries Palace (background), now a large empty space.
- Pei's pyramid now stands in the foreground, instead of the grove of trees.
State rooms of the Tuileries Palace before 1871 - Hall of Peace
"Afternoon at the Tuileries Park" by
Adolph von Menzel
Le Nôtre's central axis of the Tuileries'
parterres in a late 17th-century engraving
The same view today, past the palace's
site to the Palais du Louvre
Map of the Louvre and the Tuileries
Gardens
Jardins des Tuileries
Stretching from the Louvre to the Place de la Concorde, the Tuileries
gardens (Jardins des Tuileries) have long been popular with bourgeois
parisian families taking their Sunday promenade, though nowadays, the
chairs placed around the water-features are often occupied by tourists
resting after a tour of the Louvre or one of the smaller galleries in
the gardens, the Jeu de Paume and Orangerie. Named after the medieval warren of tilemakers that once occupied
the site, the Tuileries gradens are all that survive of the palace and
grounds commissioned by Catherine de Medicis in the mid-sixteenth
century. The palace was burnt down during the Paris Commune in 1871.
Catherine took great interest in her garden and had a maze, a
chequerboard of flowerbeds and formal vegetable gardens laid out, to be
admired by guests at her sumptuous parties. A hundred years later, le
Notre, who landscaped the grounds of Versailles, created the current
schema of the gardens, installing a central axis, terrasses, and round
and octagonal pools. Later, sculptures were brought here from Versailles
and Marly, included Coysevox's rearing horses Fama and Mercury. The
originals are now housed in the Richelieu wing of the Louvre and have
been replaced by copies. During the eighteenth century, fashionable parisians came to the
gardens to preen and party, and in 1783, the Montgolfier brothers,
Josephine and Etienne, launched the first successful hot-air balloon
here. The first serious replanting was carried out after the revolution,
and in the ninetieth century, rare species were added to the garden, by
this time dominated by chestnut trees. Unfortunately, the December 1999
storms which ravaged northern France, stripped the Tuileries gardens of
some of its oldest trees : the centennial chestnuts around the two
central oval ponds are now the most senior. Le Notre's original design,
however, remains little changed. In recent years, some modern sculptures
have been placed around the gardens, mostly works by Giacometti, Ernst,
Moore, Raymond Mason and a couple of colorful Solférino footbridge,
which was opened in 1999 and links the Tuileries with Musée d'Orsay on
the Left bank.
Tuileries Palace
The Tuileries Palace stood in Paris, France, on the right bank of
the River Seine until 1871, when it was destroyed. It closed the western
end of the Louvre courtyard, which has remained unopen since the
destruction of the palace.
History of the Tuileries After the death of Henry II of France in 1559, his widow
Catherine de' Medicis (1519-1589) planned a new palace. She began the
building of the palace of Tuileries in 1564, using architect Philibert
de l'Orme. The name derives from the tile kilns or tuileries which
previously occupied the site. The palace was formed by a range of long,
narrow buildings with high roofs that enclosed one major and two minor
courtyards. The building was greatly enlarged in the 1600s, so that the
southeast corner of the Tuileries joined the Louvre.
Louis XIV resided at the Tuileries Palace while Versailles was
under construction. His garden designer André Le Notre laid out
parterres for the Tuileries in 1664, but when the king left, the
building was virtually abandoned. It was used only as a theater, and its
gardens became a fashionable resort of Parisians. During the French
Revolution, Louis XVI and his family were forced to return from
Versailles to the Tuileries under house arrest, starting in October
1789. They tried to escape on the evening of June 20, 1791, but were
captured at Varennes and were returned to the Tuileries. The Tuileries
were later stormed on August 10, 1792 by the Paris mob, which
overwhelmed and massacred the Swiss Guard as the royal family fled
through the gardens and took refuge with the Legislative Assembly.
On November 9, 1789, the National Constituent Assembly, formerly
the Estates-General of 1789, moved its deliberations from the tennis
court at Versailles to the Tuileries, following the removal of the court
to Paris. The Tuileries' covered riding ring, the Salle du Manège, home
to the royal equestrian academy, provided the largest indoor space in
the city. It accommodated the Constituent Assembly, its successor, the
National Convention, and in 1795, the Council of 500 of the Directoire
until the body moved to the Palais-Bourbon in 1798. In 1799, the Jacobin
Club du Manège had its headquarters there.
When Napoleon came into power he made Tuileries the official
residence of the first consul and then the imperial palace. In 1808
Napoleon began constructing the northern gallery which also connected to
the Louvre, enclosing a vast place.
As Napoleon's chief residence Tuileries Palace was redecorated in
the Neoclassical Empire style by Percier and Fontaine and some of the
best known architects, designers, and furniture makers of the day. One
of the artists, Pierre Paul Prud'hon's (1758-1823) most splendid
commissions was to design the apartments of the new Empress,
Marie-Louise. For the bridal suite of the Empress Marie-Louise he
designed all the furniture and interior decorations in a Greek Revival
style.
In 1809, Jacob-Desmalter, principal supplier of furniture to the
Emperor, began work on a jewel cabinet designed for the Empress
Joséphine's great bedroom in the Tuileries (and soon to be used by
Marie-Louise). This impressive piece of furniture designed by the
architect Charles Percier was embellished with several gilt-bronze
ornaments: the central panel depicts the "Birth of the Queen of the
Earth to whom Cupids and Goddesses hasten with their Offerings" by the
bronzier Pierre-Philippe Thomire, after a bas-relief by Chaudet. Jacob-Desmalter
completed the "great jewelry box" in 1812, with two smaller items of
furniture in the same style but using indigenous woods.
The Tuileries Palace served as the royal residence after the
Bourbon Restoration. In the "July Revolution" of 1830, the palace was
attacked for a third time by Parisians and occupied. Louis Philippe took
up permanent residence there until 1848 when it was again invaded, on
February 24, 1848. The Swiss Guards stationed at the palace, aware of
what happened in 1792 to their predecessors, abandoned the palace.
The Palace of the Tuileries served again as the official
residence of the executive branch of government after the coup d'état by
Napoléon III in 1852. When President Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte became
Emperor Napoléon III he moved from his presidential office at the Élysée
Palace to the Tuileries Palace, ushering in the Second Empire. During
the Second Empire, the Tuileries Palace was extensively refurbished and
redecorated after the looting and damage that occurred during the
Revolution of 1848. Some imposing state rooms were designed and richly
decorated, serving as the center stage of the ceremonies and pageantry
of the Second Empire, such as on the occasion of Queen Victoria's state
visit to the Tuileries in 1855. The Second Empire also completed the
northern wing of the Louvre along the rue de Rivoli, linking the
Tuileries Palace with the rest of the Louvre, and thus finally achieving
the huge complex of the Louvre-Tuileries, whose master plan had been
envisioned three centuries earlier.
The prominent roof-lines of the palace and especially its squared
central dome were influential prototypes in the Second Empire style
adopted for hotels and commercial buildings as well as residences in the
United Kingdom and North America.
End of the Tuileries The final completion of the long planned Louvre-Tuileries
complex was not to last long. On May 23, 1871, during the suppression of
the Paris Commune, twelve men under the orders of a Commune extremist,
Dardelle, set the Tuileries on fire at 7 pm, using petroleum, liquid
tar, and turpentine. The fire lasted for 48 hours and entirely consumed
the palace. It was only on May 25 that the Paris fire brigades and the
26th battalion of the Africa Chasseurs managed to put out the fire.
Other portions of the Louvre were also set on fire by Commune extremists
and entirely destroyed. The museum itself was only miraculously saved.
The ruins of the Tuileries stood on the site for eleven years.
Although the roofs and the inside of the palace had been utterly
destroyed by the fire, the stone shell of the palace remained intact,
and restoration was possible. Other monuments of Paris also set on fire
by Commune extremists, such as the Paris City Hall, were rebuilt in the
1870s. After much hesitation, the Third Republic eventually decided not
to restore the ruins of the Tuileries, which had become a symbol of the
former royal and imperial regimes. On the other hand, the portions of
the Louvre that had also been destroyed by fire were rebuilt in their
original style by the French government.
In 1882 the French National Assembly voted for the demolition of
the ruins, which were sold to a private entrepreneur for the sum of
33,300 gold francs (approximately US$130,000 in 2005), despite the
protests of Baron Haussmann and other members of French artistic and
architectural circles, who opposed what they thought was a crime against
French arts and history. The demolition was started in February 1883 and
completed on September 30, 1883. Bits of stone and marble from the
palace were sold by the private entrepreneur as souvenirs and even to
build a castle in Corsica, near Ajaccio, the "château de la punta"
http://pagesperso-orange.fr/lapunta/
Tuileries Garden and the Axe Historique
When the large empty space between the northern and southern
wings of the Louvre now familiar to modern visitors was revealed in
1883, for the first time the Louvre courtyard opened into an unbroken
Axe historique. The Tuileries Garden (French Jardin des Tuileries) is
surrounded by the Louvre (to the east), the Seine (to the south), the
Place de la Concorde (to the west) and the Rue de Rivoli (to the north).
Further to the north lies the Place Vendôme.
The Tuileries Garden covers about 63 acres (25 hectares) and
still closely follows a design laid out by landscape architect Andre Le
Notre in 1664. His spacious formal garden plan drew out the perspective
from the reflecting pools one to the other in an unbroken vista along a
central axis from the west façade, which has been extended as the Axe
historique.
The Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume is a museum of contemporary
art located in the north-west corner of the gardens.
Rebuilding the Tuileries? Since 2003, a committee in France has been proposing to
rebuild the Tuileries Palace. This effort is similar to the proposal of
reconstruction of the Berliner Stadtschloss (Berlin City Palace). There
are several reasons for rebuilding the Palace of the Tuileries. Ever
since the destruction of 1883, the famous perspective of the
Champs-Élysées, which ended on the majestic facade of the Tuileries
Palace, now ends in the Arc du Carrousel, formerly centered on the
Tuileries but now occupying a large empty space. The Louvre, with its
pyramid on the one hand and the axis of the Place de la
Concorde-Champs-Élysées-Arc de Triomphe on the other, are not aligned on
the same axis. The Arc du Carrousel fortuitously stands near the
intersection of the two axes. The Palace of the Tuileries, which was
located at the junction of these two diverging axes, helped to disguise
this bending of the axes. Famous architects[citation needed] argue that
the rebuilding of the Tuileries would allow the re-establishment of the
harmony of these two different axes. The Tuileries Gardens would also
recover their purpose, which was to be a palace garden.
Also, it is emphasized that the Louvre Museum needs to expand its
groundplan to properly display all its collections, and if the Tuileries
Palace is rebuilt the Louvre Museum could expand into the rebuilt
palace. It is also proposed to rebuild the state apartments of the
Second Empire as they stood in 1871. All the plans of the palace and
many photographs are still stored in French archives. Furthermore, all
the furniture and paintings from the palace survived the 1871 fire
because they had been removed from the palace in 1870 at the start of
the Franco-Prussian War and stored in secure locations. Today, the
furniture and paintings are still deposited in storehouses and not on
public display due to the lack of space in the Louvre Museum. It is
argued that recreating the state apartments of the Tuileries Palace
would allow the display of these treasures of the Second Empire style
which are currently hidden.
A rebuilding of the Palace of the Tuileries is estimated to cost
300 million euros (US$ 400 million). It would be financed by public
subscription and the work would be undertaken by a private foundation,
with the French government spending no money on the project. Since 2003,
the idea has gained momentum in French media.