Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir captured this gracious garden with paint and brush and all Parisians know it as a lovely place to stroll and survey the surrounding cityscape. A palace once stood here -- somehow, 16th-century rulers felt the need for yet another royal residence -- on the site of a clay pit that supplied material for many of the city's tile roofs. (Hence the name tuileries, or tile works.) During the Revolution Louis XVI and his family were kept in the Tuileries under house arrest. The palace was repeatedly swarmed by angry mobs, and in one gruesome incident hundreds of Swiss Guards were killed. This history didn't deter either Napoléon or Louis-Philippe from living there, but the palace was burned during the 1871 Communard uprising. Now the Tuileries is a typically French garden: formal and neatly patterned, with statues, rows of trees, fountains with gaping fish, and gravel paths. No wonder the Impressionists liked it here -- the gray, austere light of Paris makes green trees look even greener. Métro: Tuileries.