Monument of Louis XIV in the cour
d'honneur
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 he
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.
Architecture
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 May 6, 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 Bedroom (the
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. 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.
Features
Proclamation of the German Empire in the Hall of Mirrors, 1871. Bismarck
in white. By Anton von Werner
The Hall of Mirrors (French: Galerie des Glaces) is a large room in the
palace. It is generally considered one of the major attractions of the
palace and is currently undergoing restoration.
The galerie was started in 1678, at the time the château became the
official residence of Louis XIV. It was completed in 1684. There are
many references to it in Marie Antoinette's diary. The Hall of Mirrors
is a tribute to the hall inside the Ancient Persian Kingdom of
Persepolis.
Ornate statues in the Hall of Mirrors.
After the signing of the Treaty of Nijmegen (1678), at the high point of
his reign, Louis XIV ordered Le Brun to paint the benefits of his
government on the ceiling. The painter conceived 30 scenes, framed with
stucco: the king appears as a Roman Emperor, as great administrator of
his kingdom, and as victorious over foreign powers.
It was in this hall that the German Empire was proclaimed on January 18,
1871, following the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War. It was
also here that Germany signed the Treaty of Versailles (1919),
officially ending World War I between her and the victorious Entente
powers.
The galerie is located on the first floor of the building. It contains 357
mirrors. It is 73 metres long, 10.50 metres wide, and 12.30 metres high
(239.5 ft by 34.4 ft by 40.4 ft). It is located between the salon de la
Guerre (Hall of War) at its northern end, and by the salon de la Paix
(Hall of Peace) at its southern end.
Seventeen windows, opening onto the gardens, face seventeen arcades lined
with mirrors. These mirrors, of an exceptional size for the time, were
produced by Saint-Gobain, a Parisian manufacture created by Colbert to
compete with the products of Venice.
Park and garden
The central axis of Le Nôtre's garden seen from the Bassin de Diane
centered on the château
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The grounds of Versailles contain one of the largest formal gardens ever
created, with a extensive parterres, fountains and canals designed by
André Le Nôtre.
Outbuildings
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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
While Versailles was grand and luxurious, it was also expensive to
maintain. It has been estimated that maintaining Versailles, including
the care and feeding of its staff and the royal family, consumed as much
as 25% of the government income of France [citation needed]. This may
seem extraordinarily large, but Versailles was the centre of government
as well as a residence. Additionally, the 25% figure is disputed by
historians who consider that it has been exaggerated by those who wish
to overemphasise the role of royal extravagance in the causation of the
French Revolution. Recent estimates would suggest that the figure was
much closer to 6%. [citation needed]
The 2001 McDougal Littell text book, World History: Patterns of
Interactions, places the cost of building at approximately 2 billion
dollars (USD) in 1994. This figure is regarded by many as a gross
underestimate of the costs of the estate. [citation needed] Surviving
government records from the period have mentioned the figure of 65
million "golden" livres. It is unclear whether the "golden" livre
referenced is meant to mean the golden "Louis D'Or" coin (which was
worth 24 livres) or the standard livre currency. In any case, if these
figures are to be believed and one uses today's values for Gold ($600
per ounce) and Silver ($12 per ounce), the cost of the Versailles estate
soars to a minimum cost of $12,480,000,000 and a maximum cost of
$299,520,000,000.
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 October 5, 1870 until March
13, 1871, and the German Empire was proclaimed here on January 18.
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
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, however, until a long series of
auction sales on the premises 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.
The Would-Be Versailles
Würzburg Residenz: garden front
Peterhof (1714-1725) and the Grand Cascade
The most lasting monuments to the past glories of Versailles are not in
France but in the other countries of continental Europe. When Louis XIV
had Versailles constructed, France was the most powerful and the richest
state on the continent. 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
"better than Versailles". In the outskirts of Saint Petersburg he had
the Peterhof complex of buildings in gardens and parks built (small
illustration, right). The great palace of the complex is a spectacular
building, set atop a hill above a cascade outdoing its model, Louis
XIV's cascade at the Chateau of Marly. Another great impression is the
mighty fountains of Peterhof, working every day during warm season --
while choosing place for new palace, the key feature was existence of
rich and reliable water sources at the vicinity.
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,
Brühl Ludwigsburg, Herrenhausen ,Schloss Schleissheim and the Residenz
all
In the Sweeden, there was 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 Lazienki and Branicki Palace.
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