Napolean decreed that sycamore trees should be planted all over Paris--a better idea than invading Russia. Today those sycamores, along with plane, chestnut and other trees, thickly lining the boulevards and parks of the city, give Paris its distinctively arboreal feel.
Greek temples, with their thick girth of pillars, were meant to simulate groves of trees where rites were performed and where abided sylvan gods and spirits. The Romans adapted those pillars for their own religious and civic architecture; Renaissance architects revived the style, and then Louis XIV made it his house style in Paris, with Corinthian pillars arranged in metronomic couplets across the width of his palace façade. To be sure, for Louis as for Napoleon, the pillars were less suggestive of nymphs in emerald woods than they were of imperial Roman glory.
Just about the time the king finished this imposing neo-classical façade, however, he lost interest in Paris (Louis in fact never liked insurrectionist Paris) and moved to Versailles. By that time, too, the hub of the city had moved farther west along the Seine, to present-day Place de la Concorde. The palace got turned around and the Tuilleries became the front yard. Even today, few people coming to the Louvre see this forgotten back wall; even fewer realize that it was once meant to be the frontal glory of the palace.
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