The Tuileries Gardens are the largest and oldest gardens in Paris. The name, meaning tile factory, is due to Queen Catherine de Médicis building her own Palace near the Louvre, on a plot of land where previously stood three tile factories.

The Tuileries gardens were meant to offer a grand view from her Palace and Catherine being Italian she commissioned Italian gardens. Later, Louis XIV’s master gardener André Le Nôtre (the same one responsible for Versailles) re-designed gardens “à la Française”.

Sadly, the Tuileries Palace did not survive the destructive fires of the 1871 Commune (4th French Revolution) but we can still stroll through the gardens, and what we see now is fairly similar to what Catherine had enjoyed...