The Tuileries, the Orangerie and the Place de la Concorde

Why it matters

The Tuileries Garden is the long formal garden between the Louvre and the Place de la Concorde, in the 1st arrondissement: 63 acres of gravel walks, clipped trees, pools and statues. It was made as the garden of a palace that no longer exists, and for more than three centuries it has been where Parisians come to walk, sit and be seen.

At its western end, on a terrace above the square, the Musée de l'Orangerie holds Claude Monet's Water Lilies murals in two oval rooms built to his design. Beyond the terrace lies the Place de la Concorde, the largest square in the city, where the guillotine stood during the Revolution and where an obelisk from the temple of Luxor now marks the start of the Champs-Élysées.

A garden without its palace

In 1564 Catherine de' Medici, widow of Henry II, began a new palace west of the Louvre on land once used by tile makers, the tuileries that gave it its name, and laid out an Italian garden in front of it. A century later, in 1664, Louis XIV's minister Colbert commissioned André Le Nôtre to redesign the whole garden. Le Nôtre, whose grandfather had been one of Catherine's gardeners, gave it the form it still has: a central axis running west from the palace, wide terraces along the sides, and pools at either end. It was opened to the public in 1667.

The palace itself burned in 1871, during the Commune, and its ruins were cleared in the 1880s. The garden then ran straight into the open courtyard of the Louvre, which is why today the view runs uninterrupted from the Carrousel arch through the garden, across the Concorde and up the Champs-Élysées toward the Arc de Triomphe.

What you see: the garden

Enter from the Louvre end, past the small Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, modeled on a Roman triumphal arch, and the Grande Allée opens ahead. Near the Louvre is the round pool, with its fountain and ring of iron chairs; at the far end is the larger octagonal pool, a favorite place for lunch and for children with model sailboats. The statues around the octagon represent the seasons alternating with figures from ancient Rome; they are copies, and the originals are in the Louvre, as are many of the garden's older sculptures.

In 1964 the culture minister André Malraux brought modern sculpture into the garden, beginning with the bronze women of Aristide Maillol in the Carrousel section. More recent works by international artists stand among the trees on either side of the Grande Allée. Two horseshoe ramps at the west end lead up to the terraces that overlook the Concorde, and the river terrace, along the Seine, is one of the pleasantest walks in the center of the city.

The Orangerie and the Water Lilies

The Orangerie was built in 1852, under Napoleon III, to keep the palace's citrus trees through the winter. After the First World War the state gave it to the fine arts administration, and the prime minister Georges Clemenceau, a friend of Monet's, wanted Monet's large paintings of water lilies there. The gift was settled in 1922. Monet worked with the architect on the design: eight panels, each about six and a half feet high and together almost three hundred feet long, hung around two oval rooms lit from above, which together form the shape of the infinity sign.

Downstairs, the museum shows the Walter-Guillaume collection, with works by Cézanne, Renoir, Matisse, Modigliani, Picasso, Rousseau and Soutine. On the terrace outside stand four sculptures by Rodin, among them The Kiss. On the opposite terrace, by the Rue de Rivoli, the Jeu de Paume shows changing exhibitions of photography and contemporary art.

The Place de la Concorde

The square was laid out for Louis XV and named for him, with an equestrian statue at its center. In 1792 the statue was pulled down, the square became the Place de la Révolution, and the guillotine was set up: Louis XVI was executed here on 21 January 1793, and Marie Antoinette on 16 October that year. In 1795 it was renamed the Place de la Concorde as a gesture of reconciliation.

At its center stands the Luxor obelisk, a column of yellow granite about 75 feet high, carved with hieroglyphs praising Ramesses II. It once marked the entrance to the Luxor temple, was offered to France by the ruler of Egypt in 1829, and was raised on the old statue's pedestal in 1836; the engineering of that feat is illustrated on its base. Either side of it, the architect Jacques Ignace Hittorff built two fountains, one for the seas and one for the rivers of France. The northern one stands where the guillotine stood.

How to visit

The garden is free to walk through and makes the best link between the Louvre and the rest of the Right Bank; allow half an hour to cross it slowly, longer to sit. The Orangerie is small enough to see well in an hour, and it is at its quietest early in the day; see booking ahead for timed entry.

The Concorde is a vast traffic circle, and the obelisk is best seen from the pedestrian crossings on its east side, with the garden gates behind you. From there the Grand Palais and the bridge of Alexander III are a short walk west along the river.

Myths worth setting aside

The garden is not named for any person or family. The tuileries were the tile kilns that stood here before the palace.

And the obelisk did not come as war booty. It was a diplomatic gift from Muhammad Ali, the ruler of Egypt, one of a pair; the second was too heavy to move with the technology of the time, and in 1981 President François Mitterrand formally returned France's title to it.