Park · Tuileries / Concorde · 1er arrondissement

Jardin des Tuileries

The buildingStill standing

Getting inWalk straight in

What's there nowStill the same

André Le Nôtre's great axis between the Louvre and the Concorde — the garden every walker in these pages crossed sooner or later, palace or no palace.

Address: Pl. de la Concorde — Rue de Rivoli, 75001 Paris

Illustration The Tuileries basin in summer, green chairs ringing the water and the fountain playing against the Louvre

The great free crossing, at strolling pace.

Editorial illustration

The place, briefly

The Tuileries is the oldest walking route on our map: Le Nôtre drew its axis for Louis XIV in the 1660s, and Paris has promenaded it ever since. The palace that named it burned with the Commune in 1871 and was never rebuilt, leaving what the era on our shelves inherited — a palace-less royal garden, all gravel, statuary, and chestnut shade, running from the Louvre's arms to the Place de la Concorde.

For the expatriates it was connective tissue: the grand, free, unavoidable crossing between the Right Bank of money and offices and the bridges home to the Left. Miller logs the crossing in Tropic of Cancer in a single walking breath — the garden as verb rather than destination — which is honest to how the era used it. Its neighbors tell the same story: the Crillon at its west gate, the old Gare d'Orsay across the river at its south.

The garden has since collected the Orangerie's water lilies, the Jeu de Paume, and several restorations, but Le Nôtre's geometry — and the walk — are exactly where the era left them.

In their words

…walking through the Jardin des Tuileries…

— Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer (1934)

Key facts

What it is: Le Nôtre's royal garden (1660s) on the axis from the Louvre to the Concorde
The missing palace: The Tuileries palace burned with the Commune in 1871 and was never rebuilt
In the books: The era's great free crossing — logged mid-stride in Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer
Today: Open — geometry intact, Orangerie and Jeu de Paume at its corners

In images

Pen-and-ink illustration of the Tuileries' round basin, a row of garden chairs facing the fountain with the Louvre beyond — Le Nôtre's geometry — the chairs, the basin, the palace-less axis.Editorial illustration

The Tuileries basin in summer, green chairs ringing the water and the fountain playing against the Louvre — The great free crossing, at strolling pace.Editorial illustration

Timeline

1664
Le Nôtre lays out the garden on the royal axis.
1871
The palace burns in the Commune's last week; the garden carries the name alone.
1930s
Miller's generation crosses it as the twenties crowd did — on foot, between banks.
Today
Open end to end; the axis runs unbroken from the Louvre to the Concorde.

On the map

Related books

Mentioned in passing

Tropic of Cancer

Henry Miller · 1934

Crossed mid-stride in the novel's walking prose — the garden as route between the two banks of Miller's Paris.

Writers who knew this place

Henry Miller

American · The Brooklyn dropout who arrived in Paris broke at thirty-eight and wrote the exuberant, banned books that ended American censorship.

Henry Miller wrote about Jardin des Tuileries in Tropic of Cancer.

Within walking distance

The Orangerie's east portico in color — pale limestone, gilded ORANGERIE lettering, trimmed trees at either side under a clear sky.

Museum · Tuileries

Orangerie des Tuileries

The 1852 orangery of the Tuileries garden, converted to Monet's specifications and opened in 1927 as the museum of the Water Lilies.

Visit the place

The Orsay building at sunset from across the Seine, golden light on the stone façade and the river in the foreground

Railway station · Faubourg Saint-Germain

Gare d'Orsay

The Beaux-Arts terminus on the Seine where Jake Barnes and Bill Gorton, in Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, board the morning train south toward Spain — today the Musée d'Orsay.

Visit the place

Hotel · Place Vendôme

Hôtel Ritz

César Ritz's palace on the Place Vendôme — the fixed point of Right Bank luxury, where F. Scott Fitzgerald's bar legend, Tender Is the Night's longest bender, and Ernest Hemingway's two best Ritz stories all check in.

Visit the place

Bar · Place Vendôme

Bar Hemingway

A 25-seat cocktail bar at the rue Cambon end of the Ritz Paris, opened under Ernest Hemingway's name in 1994 in the former Le Petit Bar.

Visit the place

The Friday Letter

Paris, one address at a time.

The cafés, studios, and walk-up flats where the work was made — one story from the map in every letter.