Tuileries Garden

This guide to the Tuileries Garden in Paris opens at dawn on August 10, 1792, as the royal family slips through the garden while a mob of thousands gathers at the gates and six hundred Swiss Guards, awake all night, prepare to defend the palace. It also traces the garden itself back to 1564, when Catherine de Medici laid it out on old tile-kiln ground, and to Le Notre's later reshaping into the formal French style you still see. Look down at the gravel path underfoot as you listen -- it's the same one the guards crossed that morning.