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Tuileries Palace before 1871 - View
from the Louvre courtyard
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Great staircase
The
Tuileries Palace (French: Palais des
Tuileries) was a royal palace in
Paris
. It stood on the right
bank of the River Seine
until
1871, when it was destroyed in the upheaval
during the suppression of the Paris
Commune. It closed off the western end of the Louvre
courtyard,
which has remained open since the destruction of the
palace.
History
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Military review in front of the
Tuileries in 1810
After the death of
Henry II of
France in
1559, his widow
Catherine de' Medici (
1519-
1589) planned a new palace.
She began building 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
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.
Louis XV
The boy-king
Louis XV was moved
from Versailles to the Tuileries Palace on January 1, 1716, four
months after ascending to the throne. He was moved back to
Versailles on June 15, 1722, three months before his coronation.
Both moves were made at the behest of the Regent,
the duc d'Orléans. The
king also resided at the Tuileries for short periods during the
1740s.
Louis XVI
During the
French Revolution,
Louis XVI and his family were
forced to return from Versailles to the Tuileries where they were
kept under house arrest, starting in October
1789. The royal family 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.
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Tuileries Palace before 1871 - View
from the Tuileries Gardens
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
(which ran along the north end of the Tuileries
Gardens to the west of the palace), 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 the 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.
Napoleon
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.
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State rooms of the Tuileries Palace
before 1871 - Hall of Peace
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 finalization of the long planned Louvre-Tuileries complex was
not to happen. On
May 23,
1871, during the suppression of the
Paris Commune, twelve men under the orders of
a Communard,
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 Communards and entirely
destroyed. The museum itself was only miraculously
saved.
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Burnt stone shell of the Tuileries
Palace after the 1871 fire and before the destruction of 1883 -
View from the Louvre courtyard
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 Communards, 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
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The "château de la punta"
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".
[61097]
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
.
The
straight line which runs through the Place de la
Concorde
and the Arc de Triomphe
to La Défense
was originally centred on the façade of the
Tuileries, a similar line leading across the entrance court of the
Louvre. As the two façades were placed at slightly
differing angles, this has resulted in a slight 'kink' on the site
of the palace a feature ultimately dictated by the curved course of
the River
Seine
.
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.
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Map of the Louvre and the Tuileries
Gardens
Image:Valois Tapestry 2.jpg|Ball held at the Tuileries Garden in
honour of
Polish envoys,
1573Image:VBRITTO-tuileries-fountain-2008-2.jpg|Sunset at the
Tuileries Garden fountain and pool
Image:VBRITTO-tuilleries-vers-arc-2008-2.jpg|Tuileries
Gardens - Obelisque
and Arc de Triomphe in background
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 is 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 had 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.
See also
References
- Oliver Bernier, Louis The Beloved: The Life of Louis XV (Garden
City: Doubleday, 1984), pp. 12. 39
External links