Château de VersaillesPalace of Versailles |
The Château de Versailles — often called the Palace of Versailles, or simply Versailles — is a royal château, outside the gates of which the village of Versailles, France, has grown to become a full-fledged city.
Louis XIII often hunted in the woods of Versailles, and had a hunting lodge built there in 1624. In 1627 he entrusted Jacques Lemercier with the plan of a château.
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In 1660, Louis XIV, coming to majority and taking on full royal powers, was casting about for a site near Paris but away from the tumults of the city. He had grown up in the disorders of the civil war between rival bands of aristocrats called the Fronde and wanted a site where he could organize and completely control a government of France centered upon his person. He settled on the lodge and decided to convert it into a palace. In 1661 Louis Le Vau made some additions which were further developed by him 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 his residence in the château.
The château was largely completed by 1688. The team of architect Louis Le Vau, decorator Charles Le Brun and garden designer André Le Nôtre had been assembled by Louis' own finance minister Nicolas Fouquet at Vaux-le-Vicomte, whose grand success there was his undoing.
After Louis XIV, several smaller buildings were added to the Versailles area by Louis XV and Louis XVI including the Grand Trianon, the Petit Trianon, and the Hamlet of Marie Antoinette known as Petit hameau, which, in a way, is one of the world's first open air museums.
The magnificence of Versailles is so blatant that modern tourists are moved to inquire, "How much did this cost", a question they are never inspired to ask at Chartres. At Ulm, the townspeople built a cathedral so vast the entire population could stand inside it. The question asked at Versailles is not a genuine historical question, for its subtext, often spoken, is "Was it worth it?"
The
anachronistic assumption in the "cost" of Versailles lies in
perceiving it as a greatly expanded house on a royal scale. This is not
the case: Louis XIV, in building the palace, was intent on more than merely
outdoing Vaux-le-Vicomte. Versailles became the home of the French nobility
and the location of the royal court. 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 individuals. By insisting that nobles spend time at Versailles, Louis
kept them from countering his efforts to centralize the French government
in an absolute monarchy.
While the Palace was grand and luxurious, it was also expensive to maintain. It has been estimated that maintaining the Palace, including the care and feeding of its staff and the Royal Family, consumed as much as 25% of the entire government income of France. However, this 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 only 6%.
The 19th century moralists denigrating the cost of Versailles were generally unaware that, according to the memoirs of the duc de Saint-Simon, more funds were expended at Chateau of Marly than at Versailles.
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 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.
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 began to be the official residence of Louis XIV. It was completed in 1684. Many references of it are in Marie Antoinette's diary.
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) stating that Germany was responsible for World War I.
The galerie is located on the first floor of the building. It contains 578 mirrors. It is 73 m long, 10.50 m wide, and 12.30 m high. 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 a Parisian manufacture created by Colbert to compete with the products of Venice.
After the French defeat in the Prussian-French war, the castle 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 have left their mark on the palace and its huge gardens. 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, like 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 which 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.
At 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 Restauration. In 1830, the politic Louis Philippe, the "Citizen King" declared the chäteau 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]
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 the tourist views 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.