Located in the middle of the city, the neighborhoods of the Louvre were residential and animated. It had a tiny corridor to the Tuileries, a pleasure palace Catherine de Medicis had asked Philibert Delorme and Jean Bullant to build, but which had remained incomplete. Hard times had forced architects to cope with lack of gold, civil wars and the superstitious florentine Queen. Henry IV decided to mute the Louvre and Tuileries ensemble a sort of huge royal city, able to host the royal servants, nobles and even artists since 1608 in the Grande Gallerie, along the Seine between the two palaces. The hidden goal of the operation was to build two aisles in order to unite them. In 1610, the death of Henri IV, assassinated by Ravaillac, temporarily halted the realization of this goal, mostly visible through the building of the Petite and Grande Galeries, and the Pavilion des Tuileries, doing the junction. Louis XIII ordered the destruction of another part of the medieval citadel.

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