Everything about Tuileries Palace totally explained
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 open 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 Restoration
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.
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 wasn't 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 p.m., 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.
Demolition
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".
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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.
Tuileries Garden
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. Architects 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's 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'd 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.
Cost
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.
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