Palace of Versailles

"Hall of Mirrors" redirects here. For other uses, see Hall of Mirrors (disambiguation).

File:VersaillesCourHonneur.jpg

Versailles: Louis Le Vau opened up the interior court to create the expansive entrance cour d'honneur, later copied all over Europe.

The Château de Versailles, or simply Versailles, is a royal château in Versailles, France. In English it is often referred to as the Palace of Versailles. When the château was built, Versailles was a country village, but it is now a suburb of Paris with city status in its own right. From 1682, when King Louis XIV moved from Paris, until the royal family was forced to return to the capital in 1789, the Court of Versailles was the centre of power in Ancien Régime France.

In 1660, Louis XIV, who was approaching majority and the assumption of full royal powers from the advisors who had governed France during his minority, was casting about for a site near Paris but away from the tumults and diseases of the crowded city. He had grown up in the disorders of the civil war between rival factions of aristocrats called the Fronde and wanted a site where he could organize and completely control a government of France by absolute personal rule. He settled on the royal hunting lodge at Versailles, and over the following decades had it expanded into the largest palace in Europe. Versailles is famous not only as a building, but as a symbol of the system of absolute monarchy which Louis XIV espoused.

History

The first chateaux

The earliest mention of the village of Versailles is found in a document dated 1038. During this period, the village of Versailles centered on a small castle and church and the area was controlled by a local lord. The village's location on the road from Paris to Dreux and Normandy brought some prosperity to the village but following the Black Plague and the Hundred Years War, the village was largely destroyed and its population severly diminished.

In 1575, Albert de Gondi, a Florentine, purchased the seigneury of Versailles. Gondi had arrived in France with Catherine de Medici and his family became influential in the French Parliament. In the early decades of the 17th century, Gondi invited Louis XIII on several hunting trips in the forests of Versailles. Following this initial introduction to the area, Louis XIII ordered the construction of a hunting chateaux in 1624. Designed by Philibert Le Roy, the structure was constructed of stone and red brick with a slate roof. Eight years later, in 1632, Louis obtained the seignury of Versailles from the Gondi family and began to make enlargements to the chateaux.

Expansion under Louis XIV

Louis' successor, Louis XIV, took a great interest in Versailles. Beginning in 1661, the architect, Louis Le Vau, and the landscape architect, André Le Nôtre, began a major upgrade of the chateaux. It was Louis XIV's hope to create a center for the royal court. Following the Treaty of Nijmegen in 1678, the court and French government began to be moved to Versailles. The court was officially established there on 6 May 1682.

Louis's reasoning for moving the court and seat of the French government to Versailles was that he could effectively control everything single-handedly if it was in one place. All the power of France emanated from this centre: there were government offices here; as well as the homes of thousands of courtiers, their retinues and all the attendant functionaries of court. By requiring that nobles of a certain rank and position spend time each year at Versailles, Louis prevented them from developing their own regional power at the expense of his own and kept them from countering his efforts to centralize the French government in an absolute monarchy.

Galerie des Glaces

Gilded sculptures to support candelabra were commissioned to replace the silver furniture.

One of the notable features of Louis XIV's upgrade is the Galerie des Glaces or "Hall of Mirrors". Designed by the architect Jules Hardouin Mansart, work on the gallery began in 1678. The gallery is located on the first floor of the palace and takes its name from the 357 mirrors it contains. The mirrors are placed in seventeen arcades that match seventeen windows on the opposite wall. These mirrors, of an unprecedented size for the time, were produced by Saint-Gobain, a Parisian manufacture created by Colbert to compete with the products of Venice.

The gallery dimensions are 73.0 m x 10.5 m x 12.3 m (239.5 ft x 34.4 ft x 40.4 ft). It is located between the Salon de la Guerre (War Drawing Room) at its northern end and by the Salon de la Paix (Peace Drawing Room) at its southern end. Initially, the room was furnished with silver furniture that was melted down to fund wars later in Louis' reign. Louis XIV ordered Le Brun to paint the benefits of his government on the ceiling. The painter conceived thirty scenes, framed with stucco: the king appears as a Roman Emperor, as great administrator of his kingdom, and as victorious over foreign powers.

Throughout the history of the palace, this room has been the location for numerous important events. Every court diary, from Saint-Simon to Mme de Campan refers to the Galeries des Glaces and the rituals that occured there. It was also in the gallery that the German Empire was proclaimed on 18 January 1871, following the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War. It was also here that Germany signed the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, officially ending World War I.

Architecture

Versaille's chapel is one of the palace's grandest interiors.

The palace grew through a series of expansions wrapped around the original modest hunting lodge, which still remains at its heart. This led to a certain incongruity in the architecture, as the centrepiece of the palace is not in scale with its final dimensions. In 1661 Louis Le Vau made some additions which he developed further in 1668. In 1678 Mansart took over the work, the Galerie des Glaces, the chapel and the two wings being due to him. On 6 May 1682 Louis XIV took up residence in the château. Furnishings had been plundered from Louis' disgraced finance minister's Nicolas Fouquet splendid house at Vaux-le-Vicomte, whose grand success there was his undoing.

Versailles is a key example of baroque palace architecture, and many of the finest craftsmen in Europe worked it for many years.

The politics of display

Versailles became the home of the French nobility and the location of the royal court - thus becoming the center of French government. Louis XIV himself lived there, and symbolically the central room of the long extensive symmetrical range of buildings was the King's Bedchamber (La Chambre du Roi), which itself was centered on the lavish and symbolic state bed, set behind a rich railing not unlike a communion rail. All the power of France emanated from this centre: there were government offices here; as well as the homes of thousands of courtiers, their retinues and all the attendant functionaries of court. By requiring that nobles of a certain rank and position spend time each year at Versailles, Louis prevented them from developing their own regional power at the expense of his own and kept them from countering his efforts to centralize the French government in an absolute monarchy.

The King's bed

At various periods before Louis XIV established absolute rule, France like the Holy Roman Empire lacked central authority and was not the unified state it was to become during the proceeding centuries. During the Middle Ages some local nobles were at times more powerful than the French King and, although technically loyal to the King, they possessed their own provincial seats of power and government, culturally influential courts and armies loyal to them not the King and the right to levy their own taxes on their subjects. Some families were so powerful, they achieved international prominence and contracted marriage alliances with foreign royal houses to further their own political ambitions. Although nominally Kings of France, de facto royal power had at times been limited purely to the region around Paris.

Court etiquette

Life at the court was narrowly regulated by court etiquette. Etiquette became the means of social advancement for the court.

Features

Park and garden

File:Parkversailles.jpg

The central axis of Le Nôtre's garden seen from the Bassin de Diane centered on the château

The grounds of Versailles contain one of the largest formal gardens ever created, with extensive parterres, fountains and canals, designed by André Le Nôtre. Le Nôtre modified the original gardens by expanding them and giving them a sense of openness and scale. He created a plan centered around the central axis of the Grand Canal. The gardens are centered on the south front of the palace, which is set on a long terrace to give a grand view of the gardens. At the foot of the steps the Fountain of Latona is located. This fountain tells a story taken from Ovid's poem Metamorphoses. Next, is the Royal Avenue or the Tapis Vert. Surrounding this to the sides are the formal gardens. Beyond this is the Fountain of Apollo. This fountain symbolizes the rising regime of the Sun King. Beyond the Fountain lies the massive Grand Canal. Wide wide central axis rises on the far side. Even farther into the distance lie the dense woods of the King's hunting grounds.

Outbuildings

A panorama of the gardens at Versailles

Several smaller buildings were added to the park of Versailles, starting with Louis XIV's Grand Trianon (originally the Porcelain Trianon), continuing with additions by Louis XV and Louis XVI including the Petit Trianon, and the Hamlet of Marie Antoinette known as the Petit hameau.

Cost

Versailles was grand, luxurious, and expensive to maintain. It has been estimated that upkeep and maintenance, including the care and feeding of staff and the royal family, consumed as much as 25 percent of the total income of France . Although at first glance this may seem extraordinarily large, the Palace of Versailles was the centre of government as well as the the royal residence. Additionally, the 25 percent figure is disputed by some historians who believe the number has been by those who would exaggerate the role of royals' extravagance as causation for the French Revolution. Recent estimates suggest a number closer to 6 percent.

The book, World History: Patterns of Interactions (Mcdougal Littell/Houghton Mifflin, 2001) places the value at approximately US$2 billion (1994). This valuation is regarded by many as a gross underestimate. Surviving government records from the period mention 65 million golden livres. It is unclear whether this "golden" livre references the standard livre, or the Louis d'Or (a gold coin then valued at 24 livres). If accurate, using today's values for gold (US$600 per ounce, 2006) and silver (US$12 per ounce, 2006), the value of the Versailles estate soars to a staggering US$13-US$300 billion.

The Grand Trianon, 1678, Jules Hardouin-Mansart, architect

Another way to look at this controversy over the costs of Versailles, is to consider the benefits that France drew from this royal palace. Versailles, by locking the nobles into a golden cage, effectively ended the periodical aristocratic groups and rebellions that had plagued France for centuries. It also destroyed aristocratic power in the provinces, and enabled a centralization of the state, for which a majority of modern Frenchmen are still thankful to Louis XIV, although French centralization, as further developed during the French Revolution, and later the Third Republic, is currently the subject of much debate and overhauling. Versailles also had a tremendous influence on French architecture and arts, and indeed on European architecture and arts, as the court tastes and culture elaborated in Versailles influenced most of Europe. From the start, Versailles was conceived as much as a showcase of French arts and craftsmanship organized in the royal workshops of the Gobelins, as a home for a king. Modern Frenchmen, even the least sympathetic to the former monarchy, are still generally quite proud of the lasting influence that French arts developed in Versailles have had in the world.

War uses

After the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, the palace was the main headquarters of the German army from 5 October 1870 until 13 March 1871, and hosted the opening of the Paris Peace Conference on 18 January 1919.

The ravages of war and neglect over the centuries left their mark on the palace and its huge bushes. Modern French governments of the post-World War II era have sought to repair these damages. They have on the whole been successful, but some of the more costly items, such as the vast array of fountains, have yet to be put back completely in service. As spectacular as they might seem now, they were even more extensive in the 18th century. The 18th-century waterworks at Marly— the machine de Marly that fed the fountains— was probably the biggest mechanical system of its time. The water came in from afar on monumental stone aqueducts, which have long ago fallen in disrepair or been torn down.

Post-royal: the monument-museum

Marie-Antoinette's pastoral pondside Hameau in the park, built in 1783

After the Revolution the paintings and sculpture, like the crown jewels, were consigned to the new Musée du Louvre as part of the cultural patrimony of France. Other contents went to serve a new and moral public role: books and medals went to the Bibliothèque Nationale, clocks and scientific instruments (Louis XVI was a connoisseur of science) to the École des Arts et Métiers. Versailles was still the most richly-appointed royal palace of Europe until a long series of auction sales on the premises, which unrolled for months during the Revolution, emptying Versailles slowly of every shred of amenity, at derisory prices, mostly to professional brocanteurs. The immediate purpose was to raise desperately-needed funds for the armies of the people, but the long-range strategy was to ensure that there was no Versailles for any king ever to come back to. The strategy has worked. Though Versailles was declared an imperial palace, Napoleon never spent a summer's night there.

Versailles remained both royal and unused through the Restoration. In 1830, the politic Louis Philippe, the "Citizen King" declared the château a museum dedicated to "all the glories of France," raising it for the first time above a Bourbon dynastic monument. At the same time, boiseries from the private apartments of princes and courtiers were removed and found their way, without provenance, into the incipient art market in Paris and London for such panelling. What remained were 120 rooms, the modern "Galeries Historiques".[1] The curator Pierre de Nohlac began the conservation of the castle in the 1880s until the 1930s, which is considered a significant contribution to the great modern interest in Versailles.

In the 1960s, Pierre Verlet, the greatest writer on the history of French furniture managed to get some royal furnishings returned from the museums and ministries and ambassadors' residences where they had become scattered from the central warehouses of the Mobilier National. He conceived the bold scheme of refurnishing Versailles, and the refurnished royal Appartements that tourists view today are due to Verlet's successful initiative, in which textiles were even rewoven to refurbish the state beds.

Today, the wise visitor is standing at the entrance to the Grands appartements du Roi at 8:30, not to spend hours in line. By 11 AM the state rooms are as crushed as a Métro rush hour. Tour guides rally their groups with a handkerchief on a stick for visibility in the mob and project simultaneous commentaries. In the summer months, the royal appartements close at 5:30 PM, and the most knowledgeable visitor arrives shortly before 5, pays a reduced price, and is the last to leave.

Buildings inspired by Versailles

Würzburg Residenz: garden front

Versailles ignited a competitive spate of building palaces in fountain-filled gardens among the power elite of Europe, not all of them kings.

The most direct homage to Versailles was at the request of Ludwig II of Bavaria when he asked for a nearly identical copy of Versailles, Herrenchiemsee, to be built on an island on the bucolic Chiemsee lake in the countryside of Bavaria. His funds ran out too soon but the central portion was finished, along with its hall of mirrors, and formal French gardens were planted around it.

An impressive effort was made by Peter I of Russia. He visited Versailles during the "Grand Embassy" and later decided to build a residence in the outskirts of Saint Petersburg he had the Peterhof complex of buildings in gardens and parks built.

Efforts in England included renovations at Hampton Court, and the all-but-royal Chatsworth. The direct British answer to Versailles is Blenheim Palace, built as a national monument for Louis' nemesis, the Duke of Marlborough.

Several other large palaces were also created throughout Europe, but the degree that they were inspired by, or copied from Versailles cannot be known definitively.

In the courts of Germany, several Versailles-like palaces were constructed, including Wilhelmshöhe at Kassel, Schloss Augustusburg in Brühl, Ludwigsburg, Herrenhausen, Schloss Schleissheim and the Residenz in Würzburg.

In Sweden, there is Drottningholm, in Austria Schönbrunn, and in Hungary Eszterháza.

In Italy, the "would-be Versailles" include Caserta Palace, Colorno and Stupinigi.

In the Iberian peninsula two competitors for Versailles stand out: La Granja near Madrid, and Queluz in Portugal.

Poland also had Łazienki and Branicki palaces.

See also

• Bureau du Roi
• French Baroque and Classicism
• French Rococo and Neoclassicism
• Menagerie

External links

• Official Site
• Extensive Photo Gallery of Versailles
• The Story of Versailles by Francis Loring Payne, from Project Gutenberg
• French The Hall of Mirrors Restoration
• French Pictures of : "Les Grandes Eaux Nocturnes"
• Palace of Versailles photos
• Visiting information Palace of Versailles
• Comprehensive audio guide covering history and culture of the Chateau.
• Podcasts describing Versailles

• • Satellite image from Mapygon