It was a commonplace at the time to repeat the warning: "O! Tuileries! O! Tuileries! Mad indeed are those who enter thy walls, for like Louis XVI, Napoleon, Charles X and Louis Philippe you shall make your exit by another door."
The origin of the name Tuileries is somewhat ignominiously traced from that of a tile factory which existed here in the heart of Paris, on the banks of the Seine, in the sixteenth century. The property, which comprised a manor-house as well as the tile fields, was known by the name of La Sablonnière, and came to the Marquis Neuville de Villeroy, Superintendent of Finances, who built on the spot a sort of fortified chateau, which, if not of palatial dimensions, was of a palatial prodigality of luxury.
Louise de Savoie, mother of Francis I, acquired the property in 1518 and nine years later gave it to Jean Tiercelin, the Maitre d'Hotel of the dauphin, who later was to become Henri II.
The lodge, or manor-house, had, by 1564, fallen into so ruinous a state that Catherine de Médici, the widow of Henri II, set about to lay the foundations of a new royal palace.
Catherine never resided in her projected palace, and in 1566 Charles IX, her son, gave the commission to Philibert Delorme to build a palace, "neighbouring upon the Louvre, but not to be connected therewith, on the site of the Tuileries."
On July 11, work was begun, and the central pavilion and the two extremes were carried up two stories within a year. The central structure was a great circular-domed edifice, enclosing a marvellous Escalier d'Honneur. The façade, preceded by two terraced porticos, was on the courtyard, or garden, between the edifice and the Louvre. It sat back to the present Rue des Tuileries.
The Tuileries did not become a royal residence for some time after its completion, for Charles IX clung tenaciously to his well-guarded apartments in the Louvre; for the central structure of the Tuileries, because of its lack of comparative height, was hardly as much of a stronghold as he would have liked.
A contemporary note in connection with Charles IX and the Tuileries is found in Ronsard's "Épitre à Charles IX."
"J'ay veu trop de maçons
Bastir les Tuileries,
Et en trop de façons
Faire les momeries."
Work on the edifice so auspiciously planned by Delorme was practically discontinued during the reign of Henri III, owing to lack of funds.