Aug. 23 (Bloomberg) -- The news that in Paris the reconstruction of the Tuileries Palace is being seriously considered provokes a gasp of surprise, and perhaps bewilderment.

No one has seen this handsome pile since it was torched by the Communards in 1871. For the past century and more the name ``Tuileries'' has brought to mind not a building but a garden.

Now, the French government is considering a project to put it back on the original site, opposite the Louvre, at an estimated cost of 300 million euros ($383 million). If the plan -- which would be funded from private sources -- goes ahead, it will by no means be unique. To a surprising extent, the monuments of Europe are not original, but reproduction.

A substantial quantity of medieval castles and cathedrals were more or less rebuilt in the 19th century. This is a process that continues and one that raises a couple of thorny questions. Are the results the architectural equivalent of repro furniture -- costly fakes? And how do you choose which buildings to revive, and which to condemn? In other words, which past do you choose?

Since World War II, the historic center of Dresden, Germany, notoriously destroyed in a firestorm caused by Allied bombing on Feb. 13, 1945, has to a large extent been recreated. The culmination of this process was the reconsecration of the Frauenkirche on Oct. 30 last year.

The 18th-century church had lain in ruins for 40 year before being resurrected at a cost of 180 million euros.

Dresden, Disney

Now, the surrounding baroque palaces of the Neumarkt are rising again. The success of the Dresden restorations gives an answer to the first question. A building consists not only of old stones and bricks, but of an idea: the design. If you follow that faithfully, the result is much better than architectural Disneyland, the charge that critics always make.

A similar process took place in the historic center of Warsaw, in many towns in Germany and in Russia. And it is not only World War II devastation that has been undone. Since the fall of the Soviet regime, two cathedrals -- demolished under Stalin -- have been painstakingly reinstated in Moscow. In Kiev, the 12th century Monastery of St. Michael -- demolished in 1934-6 to create a site for an administrative headquarters -- was put back in 1997-8.

Such projects are reversals of history: Stalin's impact is magicked away. The same would be true of the much-discussed and hugely expensive idea of recreating the old Berlin Schloss (estimated cost, at least $800 million). This royal residence was the centerpiece of old Berlin. It survived World War II in better shape than many other monuments of the city, but was blown up by the Communist authorities in 1950. They didn't like it because of its associations with the Imperial past.

Lights Out

The site was eventually filled by a metal and glass structure, the Palace of the Republic, locally known as Erich's Lamp Shop, a reference to Erich Honecker, the late East German leader, and the range of light fittings it contained. This, in turn, is being demolished after a heated debate in which left-wing figures such as Guenter Grass and Dario Fo condemned its destruction as ``ideological'' and an outrage.

Symbolically, removing it amounted to erasing decades of history (the Communist era). But, of course, in towns we do that sort of thing all the time: every time a building goes, some history goes, too. The question is, always, which buildings seem crucial to the identity of a particular place.

The Frauenkirche plays the same part in the Dresden skyline as St. Paul's in London, and without St. Paul's London just wouldn't be London. What puts a building in that category? It was decided not to rebuild the Twin Towers in New York. Would that decision have been different if the lost edifice had been older and more emblematic, say the Empire State?

Fabric of Paris

Admittedly, the Tuileries project is unusual, since nobody under the age of 150 could possibly regard the building as integral to the fabric of Paris. Still the French have continued to mourn it. Charles de Gaulle felt that recreating the Tuileries would ``make a jewel of the center'' of the city, according to the Daily Telegraph newspaper, which reported the project Aug. 14.

It would also put back the lost section of the grand urban sequence that begins at the Arc de Triomphe and ends at the Louvre.

But, like the Berlin Schloss project, it poses a fundamental question. What do you do with a vast, brand-new royal residence without a monarch to live in it?

(Martin Gayford is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer on this story: Martin Gayford at martin@cgayford.freeserve.co.uk.

Last Updated: August 23, 2006 00:55 EDT