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Catherine de' Medici's building projects included the Valois chapel at Saint-Denis, the Tuileries Palace, and the Hôtel de la Reine in Paris, and extensions to the château, near Blois. Born in 1519 in Florence to an Italian father and a French mother, at the age of fourteen, she left Italy and married Henry, the second son of Francis I and Queen Claude of France. King Francis set his daughter-in-law an example of kingship and artistic patronage that she never forgot. She witnessed his huge architectural schemes at Chambord and Fontainebleau. Upon Henry's death in 1559, Catherine found herself the effective ruler of France. Over the next three decades, she launched a series of costly building projects aimed at enhancing the grandeur of the monarchy. Catherine loved to supervise each project personally. Though she spent colossal sums on the building and embellishment of monuments and palaces, little remains of Catherine's investment today: one Doric column, a few fragments in the corner of the Tuileries gardens, an empty tomb at Saint Denis. The sculptures she commissioned for the Valois chapel are lost, or scattered, often damaged or incomplete, in museums and churches. Catherine de' Medici's reputation as a sponsor of buildings rests instead on the designs and treatises of her architects. These testify to the vitality of French architecture under her patronage. (more...)

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October 5: Republic Day in Portugal (1910); International World Teachers' Day

• 869 – The Fourth Council of Constantinople, the eighth Catholic Ecumenical Council, was convened to discuss the patriarchate of Photios I of Constantinople.
• 1877 – After battling the U.S. Army for more than three months, retreating over 1,000 miles across Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana, and enduring a five-day siege, Chief Joseph and his Nez Perce band finally surrendered.
• 1903 – Samuel Griffith (pictured) became the first Chief Justice of Australia, while Edmund Barton and Richard O'Connor became the first Puisne Justices of the High Court of Australia.
• 1908 – Prince Ferdinand became the first Tsar of Bulgaria since the Ottoman invasion in the 14th century.
• 1948 – The International Union for Conservation of Nature was founded at a congress sponsored by UNESCO director Julian Huxley in Fontainebleau, France.

• More events: October 4 – October 5 – October 6

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