Actually a quote from elven
http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=43883&page=2&pp=10&highlight=GARDEN+TUILERIES
toward the end of page 2 - Elven wrote some thought proving things I hope she does not mind I copy pasted it here -
ELVEN WROTE -
Gemini 3: The Charming Court Life At The Garden of the Tuileries in Paris
I became interested in what the gardens looked like an their history. After reading some of the information available, I think I have a better idea of what the gardens were about. The Palace has a great history, but not longer exists. It opens up my meaning on the Symbol and adds to its interpretation.
Below is an extract of a glimps of the gardens The Tuileries Gardens - A Short Dark History
By Jacqueline Donnelly
Paris Kiosque Volume 3 #9.
To see the corresponding photos for the article:
http://www.paris.org/Kiosque/sep96/tuileries.html
Enjoy
I confess that of all of the monuments and spots I have discovered on foot, I have had the least respect for the Tuileries Gardens. To me,they were always the predictable ho-hum, formal 17th century garden , with 18 statues (albeit nude) and the predictable fountains.
The gardens served as a quick walk-through from the Louvre to the Place de la Concorde allowing me to avoid the tourists on the rue de Rivoli. Even the name seemed bizarre, like the tinkling of bells rather than the reference to "tuiles" or roof tiles which the factories produced for centuries near the present site of the gardens.
Oh how I have changed my mind! Having researched the dirt (forgive the pun) I find the gardens to be a contradiction - today a place for children to play , lovers to meet, and yesterday the site of great slaughter, the extension of a royal palace and a royal prison.
In order to appreciate the gardens you must sit quietly and see the invisible. Imagine a large, rather cumbersome palace that resembled the Louvre and formed the eastern edge of the side of the garden. It was built by Catherine de Medicis, an incredibly powerful and supersitious queen whose actions were determined by her soothsayer long before Nancy Reagan had the idea.
Her stay at the palace was abruptly interrupted when she learned that she would die near Saint-Germain. Since the Tuileries Palace was in the parish of the church Saint-Germain-Auxerrois, Catherine packed her bags, took her furniture and left. As history tells us, years later, on her deathbed at the royal chateau of Blois she received the last rites from Father Julien de Saint-Germain!
The Tuileries Palace can be seen in this map of 1870. It encloses the western side of the present day Louvre, connecting the Denon and Richelieu wings.
The great Louis XIV resided at the Tuileries Palace while his chateau, Versailles, was under construction. When he left, the building was abandoned, used only as a theater, until the return of the ill-fated royal family - Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, their children plus a handful of servants, who were expelled from Versailles and forced to enjoy the hospitality of the mob of Paris in October of 1789, two months after the storming of the Bastille.
What a fall from glory to leave the palatial spendor of Versailles, for the musty, cavernous halls of the Tuileries Palace.
I can see the queen playing in the garden with her children, exposed to the stares of the people, like animals in a zoo, or the well-worn paths taken by the king, as he meditated on philosophy and history in denial of the danger and inevitabily of the demise of the monarchy which would take place two years later with his execution on 21 January, 1793.
The royal family attempted escape. They slipped out of the palace, disguised as servants, praying for release from this capitivity, only to be captured in Varennes, a town on the border of Germany, recognized by a peasant from the resemblence of Louis to his coin!
They were dragged back to the Tuileries, now under strict guard. The palace and the gardens were to be their universe until the most dramatic day of the French revolution - August 10, 1792 when the bells of Paris rang in every working class neighborhood and the people stormed the palace in anger.
The royal family fled to the General Assembly hall near the Place de la Concorde. The faithful Swiss guards, loyal to the end, defended the palace, unaware that their royal charges had deserted the building.
The rabble stormed the doors, massacred the guards, looted the palace and left. The palace and once quiet garden were strewn with over 1000 corpses. The King himself could not stop the slaughter as he cowered with his family in a room of the assembly.
This revolt confirmed in the insurgents' mind the justification for dismantling the monarchy and establishing the "Commune", the first government of the people. It is not in the fall of the Bastille but in the slaughter in the Tuileries that the French Revolution made its mark!
The burned out hulk of the Tuileries Palace as it was after the Commune. (Image used with permission, Northwestern University Library; Special Collections, The Siege and Commune of Paris, 1870-1871).
The Tuileries Palace had seemed hexed. Catherine de Medicis abandoned it, Louis XIV tolerated it, Louis XVI was prisoner, ....and in 1848 during a revolt, the people of Paris sacked it; it was restored under Napoleon-III to a sumptuous palace only to be burned in the 1871 during the confrontation with another Communard government.
The accursed palace loomed, charred and in disgrace for 12 years on the site of the present expanded Tuileries gardens.
What a great concentration of French history has taken place in what today appears only to be a classical, French garden.
But, let's not leave on a dismal note. Today, lovers meet, and children play, hurried Parisians shortcut through the park, tourists wander, and life goes on.
But because we now know the story, we will not see the former palace and the present gardens in the same way.
The End.
Many Blessings
Elven x
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