Tuileries

The name Tuileries comes from the French word for tile, because the site was occupied by industrial kilns for centuries before it became a royal garden. In fifteen sixty-four, Queen Catherine de Medici commissioned a grand palace and an Italian-style garden on this very ground to replace the soot-stained tile factories. She wanted a sprawling residence separate from the crowded medieval quarters of the Louvre. While the gardens were designed for royal leisure, the palace became a volatile seat of power, hosting generations of monarchs until it was burned to the ground during the civil uprising of eighteen seventy-one.