Jardin des Tuileries

A key project in the history of garden design and in development of Paris as an axial city. The Tuileries garden was started by Catherine de Medici. Loving music, the arts, literature and science, she thought of herself as Italian, ordered her clothes from Mantua and loved the Medici's Florentine gardens. Pierre le Nôtre became chief gardener and his son, Andre le Nôtre's father, held the same position. The Jardin de Tuileries was made on the site of a tile-works (tuileries), within the old walled city on the banks of the River Seine. The original division of the space, by allees, has survived many changes. It began as a private royal pleasure garden, with flowers and fruit. After 1594, Henri IV had a terrace built along what is now the Rue de Rivoli. In his book, Jardin de plaisir (1651), Claude Mollet used the Tuilleries as a model of how a garden should be designed. Andre le Nôtre re-designed the Grand Jardin 1665-72 and built a terrace along the riverbank where his father's house had stood. He also opened up a central axis and had the noble idea of projecting it outwards. This shaft of space became the grand axis of Paris. It leads to the Arc de Triomphe and La Defense. By 2100 AD, it may extend as far again. Haussman, after 1853, used Le Nôtre's axis as a base for the design structure of Paris. Today, The Tuileries is one of the most elegant promenades of Paris. Perhaps the ghost of Machiavelli, who Catherine so admired, comes to take the air on a fine day. The area around the Louvre Pyramid was completed in 19.. and the Jardin du Carousel in 1997. The Tuileries garden was restored and adapted (1991-1996) by the landscape architects Louis Benech, Pascal Cribier and François Roubaud. They kept the old structure while re-juvinating the design.