Palais-Royal

Listen first. Under your feet, fine pale gravel crunches with every step. Above you, double rows of clipped lime trees form a long green corridor. The noise of the Rue de Rivoli fades almost at once. Around you, stone arcades enclose the whole garden, quiet and symmetrical. You are a few minutes from the Louvre, in the heart of Paris. Yet this courtyard feels like a private room the city forgot to lock.

The story begins with one powerful man. Cardinal Richelieu was chief minister to King Louis the Thirteenth in the seventeenth century. In the 1630s he built a grand residence here, close to the royal palace of the Louvre. The architect was Jacques Lemercier. At first the building was called the Palais-Cardinal, the Cardinal's Palace. Richelieu wanted to live near the king, and near power.

Richelieu died in 1642. In his will, he left the palace to the Crown. Soon after, the widowed queen, Anne of Austria, moved in with her young son, the future Louis the Fourteenth. A child king played in these gardens. Because royalty now lived here, the name changed to the one you know today — the Palais-Royal, the Royal Palace. Louis later moved on, and eventually to Versailles, but the name stayed.

Here is a detail many visitors miss. Richelieu loved theatre, and he built a theatre inside his palace. Later, the playwright Molière and his company performed in that hall. Theatre has never really left this corner of Paris. Just beside the palace stands the Comédie-Française, the national theatre company of France. It is often called the House of Molière. Its main hall faces the square at the southwest corner.

In the late seventeenth century, the palace passed to the Orléans family, cousins of the king. The biggest change came in the 1780s. The Duke of Orléans was deeply in debt. His solution was bold, even scandalous for a prince. He built long arcaded wings around the garden. Then he rented the ground floors to shops, cafés, and businesses. In effect, a royal garden became a commercial centre.

The arcades you see around you come from that project. Walk beneath them and look at the rhythm — arch, column, shop window, arch again. Each gallery has a name. Along one side runs the Galerie de Valois. Along the other runs the Galerie de Montpensier. At the far northern end is the Galerie de Beaujolais. The names come from titles held by the Orléans family.

What happened next surprised everyone, except perhaps the duke. The Palais-Royal became the liveliest place in Paris. There were cafés, bookshops, gambling rooms, and theatres. There were also pickpockets and prostitutes. The palace was the duke's private property, so the royal police could not easily enter. That made it a place of freedom. People came here to talk, to argue, and to read pamphlets the government did not like.

That freedom had consequences. On 12 July 1789, a young journalist named Camille Desmoulins stood up at a café in this garden. He called on the crowd to take up arms. Two days later, Parisians stormed the Bastille fortress. So when you sit on a bench here, you are close to one of the sparks of the French Revolution. The duke himself took the name Philippe Égalité, meaning equality. The Revolution later sent him to the guillotine.

One survivor from that era is still serving dinner. At the northern end, under the arcade, you will find Le Grand Véfour. A café operated on this site in the late eighteenth century. The restaurant inside keeps an elegant, painted interior from the early nineteenth century. Over the years, writers and politicians ate here. Even if you do not go in, look through the windows at the mirrors and the painted panels.

The arcades also attracted writers who wanted to live here. The novelist Colette spent her later years in an apartment overlooking this garden. The poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau also lived on the Rue de Montpensier, just behind. Both loved the calm here. It is easy to see why. The windows above the arcades look down onto trees, fountains, and almost no traffic at all.

Now walk to the southern courtyard, the Cour d'Honneur. Here the old palace meets the twentieth century. In 1986 the artist Daniel Buren installed a field of black and white striped columns of different heights. The work is called Les Deux Plateaux, but most people call it simply the Buren Columns. At the time, many Parisians were furious. They thought modern art did not belong in a historic courtyard. Today, children climb on the short columns, and visitors pose on them for photos.

Nearby, look for fountains with shining steel spheres. They are by the Belgian artist Pol Bury. The polished surfaces reflect the arcades, the sky, and you, in curved and moving images. Today the palace buildings hold serious state institutions. They include the Council of State, which advises the French government on law. They also include the Constitutional Council and the Ministry of Culture. Behind these quiet façades, important decisions are made every day.

One more curiosity. For a long time, a small cannon in the garden marked noon. A lens focused the sun's rays and lit the charge, so the cannon fired by itself on sunny days. Parisians set their watches by it. Look for the little cannon on its plinth in the garden lawns. It is a reminder that this place was once a meeting point for the whole city — a place for news, gossip, and the correct time.

Before you leave, stand still for a moment between the lime trees. Notice the gravel, the steady sound of the fountain, the people reading on green metal chairs. Royal children, revolutionaries, writers, and shopkeepers all walked this same ground. Now it is your turn. As you pass back under the arcades, look up at the windows above the shops. Somewhere behind them, someone is living a quiet Paris life, just as Colette did.