When spring finally arrives in Paris, along with the sun breaking through the clouds and the wonderful blossoms of April and May, it feels almost criminal not to walk through at least one of the City of Light’s gardens every day, and enjoy all the beauty that nature, mostly engineered by human hands, has to offer.
Today I want to tell you about the Tuileries Garden (in French, Jardin des Tuileries), which beyond being a gorgeous garden, has a fascinating history tied to Parisian fashion.
The Beginning of the Tuileries Garden: A Tile Factory
It all started with a tile factory that stood on the site back in the Middle Ages. Since in French, the word tuiles means tiles, the place took its name from the factory and became known as the Tuileries. In 1564, Catherine de’ Medici (1519-1589) decided to build herself a palace just west of the Louvre, with gardens next to it in the Italian style she loved.
The garden was private at first and served her until she decided to leave the palace and move into one that no longer exists, near Saint-Eustache (want to know why she fled the Tuileries Palace? You can find out on one of my tours). But it was actually a member of her own family, Marie de’ Medici (1575-1642), mother of Louis XIII (r. 1610-1643), who proved responsible for the major transformation the gardens later underwent.
It all began when Marie de’ Medici decided, in 1616, to plant a row of hornbeam trees along the southern edge of the Tuileries Garden, between the garden and the Seine. The goal was to create a promenade where the city’s nobility could ride in their fashionable new carriages (the carriage had only reached Paris at the end of the 16th century) and show off their wealth to everyone.
It was a fairly wide promenade, wide enough for up to five carriages to pass side by side, and it even had a kind of turning loop at each end so carriages could turn around. At first, the place was closed to anyone who wasn’t a noble, but in 1628 Louis XIII decided commoners could come in too, so they could watch the nobles strolling by while they themselves sat in the “latest word” in 17th-century vehicles.
Not surprisingly, the place became a huge success, and thousands of people came just to watch the nobles’ carriages go by. Savvy businessmen quickly spotted the commercial potential of the spot, and before long you could see the first street vendors darting between the carriages, selling fruit and sweets to the nobility.
Next in line to make money off the place were the matchmakers. Since Tinder wouldn’t be invented for a few more centuries, the matchmakers of Paris realized that having all the city’s noblemen and noblewomen gathered on one promenade was a wonderful business opportunity. In exchange for helping noble families secure their next generation, they managed to earn quite a bit of money. Soon enough, alongside the candy sellers, you could also see matchmakers, both men and women, dashing between the carriages, passing love notes between future brides and grooms.
Europe’s First Public Garden
The success of the Cour la Reine brought Louis XIV himself to visit, in his own magnificent carriage. After this visit, he decided in 1662 to turn the modest, old-fashioned Tuileries Garden nearby into a grand, impressive garden, as befit the Sun King.
The job went to André Le Nôtre (1613-1700), the royal garden architect, who had previously designed the stunning gardens of the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte and would later design the gardens of Versailles. Catherine de’ Medici’s Italian-style gardens were uprooted and replaced with gardens in the French style, defined by precise geometric shapes. At the same time, Le Nôtre added staircases and the promenade that still connects the Louvre Museum to the gardens today.
This is how the Louvre and the Tuileries looked in the 18th century
Even though the main avenue of the Tuileries Garden was wide enough for carriages to pass through, the nobles chose to leave their carriages at the Cour la Reine and do something never before done in Paris: simply walk. To us, it sounds completely ordinary for people to stroll through a city center, but in 17th-century Paris this was a huge novelty. The reason was that, apart from the Pont Neuf, Paris had no sidewalks, so walking on foot meant getting your feet dirty in the mud at best, or getting run over at worst.
By that time, you could already stroll through Place des Vosges, but the small garden at its center didn’t really allow for walking without constantly circling around. So when Parisians abandoned their carriages and started using their own two feet, the Tuileries Garden became the first public garden in Europe.
In this garden, you could see something that had never been seen anywhere else in Europe: women strolling on their own, or in the company of a friend, a husband, or a lover (at the time, noblewomen almost never left their homes, and when they had to, they were accompanied by quite a few servants).
Because of the varied crowd it attracted, the Tuileries Garden served different purposes at different times of day. For example, if a woman wanted to meet her lover and needed a more intimate setting, she would come to the gardens in the late afternoon and stroll with him along one of the side paths.
On the other hand, if all she wanted was to escape the Parisian August heat (as Madame de Sévigné did in 1671) and drink a cool glass of lemonade, she’d have to head to the main avenue, which meant running into just about everyone who mattered in the City of Light along the way (even in the 17th century, drinking lemonade alone wasn’t much fun).
Since all that walking around the garden was rather tiring, it’s no surprise that the first public benches were invented right here in the Tuileries Garden, in 1678. These wooden benches were where young lovers could sit, flirt, and even kiss in public, an unheard-of thing at the time. As Georges Brassens’s famous song about lovers on public benches reminds us, not much has changed since.
The Tuileries Garden Becomes History’s First Fashion Runway
The fact that nobles and commoners alike started walking on foot had a huge effect on French fashion. Until then, nobles traveled through Paris in closed carriages, making it hard for anyone to see what they were wearing (the cabriolet wouldn’t be invented until later). The moment they began strolling through public gardens, they realized they could show off not just their magnificent carriages, but also the clothes that had been tailored for them just a short time before.
And so, almost overnight, the Tuileries Garden became a fashion runway, where noblemen and noblewomen showed off the latest word in French fashion and created new trends at dizzying speed. Already in the 1680s, Paris’s tour guides had started advertising this fact.
As a result, the Tuileries Garden drew thousands of foreign visitors, who came to catch up on the latest French fashions and then rushed home to try to copy them. This is how the first fashion magazines came about, showcasing the current trends as seen in the Tuileries Garden (and since fashion changed so quickly, the people putting these magazines together had quite a lot of work on their hands).
Still, the entire fashion industry that grew up around the Tuileries Garden had an unplanned side effect. Parisian women of modest means would wander through the garden, see what the duchesses and marquises were wearing, and then shamelessly rush to their own tailor and ask him to make them the exact same outfit.
Since the first etiquette books, teaching the French how to behave politely in society, also started appearing around this time (for example: at a French meal, you only spit to your right), it quickly became almost impossible to tell a countess apart from a wealthy merchant’s wife.
At the same time, the opposite kind of story also became popular, about noblewomen who wanted to have some fun and disguised themselves as commoners or women freshly arrived from the provinces. The story goes, for instance, that in 1698 a marquise decided to disguise herself as someone who had just arrived in Paris and struck up a conversation with a count she met in the Tuileries Garden.
After talking for more than an hour, during which the count offered to teach her everything she needed to know about Paris, right there on the public bench, she startled him when she suddenly said goodbye and walked off to her own magnificent carriage, which carried her back to her Parisian mansion.
Charles Perrault and Catherine Deneuve Stroll Through the Tuileries Garden
Since we’re already in the 17th century, this is a great chance to tell you about Charles Perrault (1628-1703), the famous author of fairy tales, whose brother Claude Perrault (1613-1688) built the eastern facade of the Louvre Palace, not far from here. You’ll find his statue in the western part of the Tuileries Garden.
The Tuileries Garden: From the 18th Century to Today
The Tuileries Garden stayed very popular even after the 17th century. During the 18th century, the gardens made it into the history books once again when, in 1783, the Montgolfier brothers chose them for their first hot air balloon flight. A few years later, the gardens witnessed far less cheerful scenes, when in 1792 a riled-up revolutionary mob stormed the Tuileries Palace and slaughtered Louis XVI’s bodyguards.
Two years later, Robespierre (1758-1794) celebrated the “Festival of Reason” with a lavish ceremony by the pond where children now sail toy boats. By then, of course, the Tuileries Garden had lost all of its romance: who wants to flirt when, just a few steps away, at the Place de la Révolution (today’s Place de la Concorde), the guillotine was busy severing heads?
During the 19th century, the garden went through many changes as a result of the paving of Rue de Rivoli nearby by Napoleon. His nephew, Napoleon III, added the Musée de l’Orangerie and the Jeu de Paume building. Both went on to become highly successful museums in the 20th century. If the Tuileries Garden had eyes, it would soon have seen the palace right next to it burned down by the Paris Communards during their fight against the government in May 1871.
During the 20th century, the fate of Paris was decided just a few steps away, at the Hôtel Meurice, where General Dietrich von Choltitz (1894-1966) was staying after receiving orders from Hitler to destroy the City of Light. Luckily for all of us, the general ultimately chose to disobey that order, and we can still enjoy the charms of this city to this day.
After World War II, Paris began to recover, and the Tuileries Garden became more beautiful and inviting than ever. Statues by Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), Aristide Maillol (1861-1944), and others were added, along with the green chairs that invite all of us to sit for a moment, soak in all this beauty, and say, “how great that we’re in Paris.”
The photos in this post are courtesy of Yoel Thamanlis, owner of the Facebook page Paris Through the Zoom.
Tuileries Garden: Opening Hours, Getting There, and More Information
The Tuileries Garden is open every day of the week from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. You can get there using the following metro lines:
- Line 1 (get off at the Jardins de Tuileries station)
- Lines 8 and 12 (both stop at Concorde), from where you can enter the gardens through their western entrance.
I highly recommend combining your visit to the gardens with a stop at the Louvre Museum, the Musée de l’Orangerie, and even Musée d’Orsay, which isn’t too far away on the other side of the river. And of course, if you’re visiting Paris in November or December, don’t miss the Christmas market there, the largest and most important of all of Paris’s Christmas markets.
Want to Stay Near the Tuileries Garden?
There are two big advantages to staying near the Tuileries Garden. The first is its beauty (there’s nothing better than starting your day with a short visit there, before all the tourists arrive). The second advantage is its very central location, right by the Louvre Museum and close to the Left Bank and the Champs-Élysées.
If you’ve decided to stay near the Tuileries Garden, let me recommend this apartment, where I’ve personally stayed twice (it’s near Place de la Concorde, just a few minutes’ walk from the garden’s entrance).
If that apartment isn’t available, I recommend staying in the 1st or 8th arrondissement, in the areas closest to the gardens, or in the 7th arrondissement, parts of which sit right by the Seine and very close to the Tuileries Garden itself.
- If you’re looking for a good hotel in these areas, read my guide to hotels in Paris.
- If you’d rather stay in a vacation apartment, check out my article on vacation rentals in Paris.
If you’re looking for more parks to explore, I highly recommend Yoel Thamanlis’s wonderful article, 15 Parks, Gardens, and Forests in Paris You Have to Know.
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