Jardin des Tuileries, Paris

This is the Tuileries Garden, a public park set between the Louvre and the Place de la Concorde. Catherine de’ Medici began it in 1564 as the garden of the Tuileries Palace, and it opened to the public in 1667. After the French Revolution, it became a public park, and since the nineteenth century it has served as a place to meet, celebrate, stroll, and relax.

The long avenues and carefully framed views you can see come from André Le Nôtre’s redesign, commissioned in 1664. He shaped the garden with symmetry, broad perspectives, terraces, fountains, and tree-lined paths. Its formal geometry is still the defining experience of this place: the planting compartments, straight walks, and open reach make the garden feel almost architectural.

The garden covers 25.5 hectares, and it later expanded into the former courtyard of the demolished Tuileries Palace. In 2024, this historic setting hosted the Olympic and Paralympic cauldron. Look at the long central axis and the ordered rows of trees: they show how Le Nôtre turned a royal garden into a carefully composed landscape that remains a public meeting place today.