In 1564, Catherine of Medici had the tile factories opposite the Louvre palace demolished to build a palace that was to be called... the Tuileries! The palace was flanked to the west by a large Italian garden. One century later, Colbert and Louis XIV commissioned Le Nôtre to remodel the Tuileries garden. The gardener designed French parterres, created a central avenue in the axis of the Louvre palace and created the Bord-de-l’Eau terrace. The main axis, punctuated by two basins, ends in a large horseshoe, extended in the distance by the road leading to the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, then a royal residence.