The Burning of Tuileries Palace

Directly in front of the Louvre, between the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel and the Arc de Triomphe de l'Etoile in Paris, where there is now a vast empty space, there once stood the magnificent Tuileries Palace, home of French monarchs. It was burned down in 1871 by the Paris Commune, a revolutionary government that seized power in Paris for two months. The Tuileries Palace was commissioned in 1564 by Catherine de' Medici, widow of Henry II of France. After the accidental death of her husband, Catherine wanted a new residence for herself, close to the Louvre. The site selected for the palace, just outside the walls of the city, was previously occupied by the workshops and kilns craftsmen who made "tuiles", or roof tiles, and hence the name of the palace. Catherine engaged Philibert de l'Orme to design the palace. But de l'Orme’s untimely death in 1570 led to Jean Bullant taking his place. The outbreak of the civil between Protestants and Catholics in Paris in 1588 abruptly halted the work. Work did not resume until 1594, when Henry IV of France made a triumphal return to Paris, and recommenced construction of the Louvre and the Tuileries Palace. He constructed the Grande Galerie, parallel to the Seine, which connected the two palaces. The Grand Gallery and the Gros Pavilion des Tuileries, now called the Pavillon de Flore, was completed during his time. After the death of Henry IV of France in 1610, work on the palace halted again. It resumed after the civil wars, and between 1659 and 1661, the king and Cardinal Mazarin had First Royal Architect Louis Le Vau enlarge the palace, extending it to the north by the addition of the Théâtre des Tuileries. Le Vau made other significant changes. They transformed Philibert de l'Orme's facades and central pavilion, replacing its grand central staircase with a colonnaded vestibule on the ground floor and the Salle des Cents Suisses on the floor above and adding a rectangular dome.