
[[Image:VersaillesCourHonneur.jpg|right|thumb|300px|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 — 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. ==History== Louis XIII of France 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. In 1660, Louis XIV of France, 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 Jules Hardouin 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 Andre Le Notre 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 of France and Louis XVI of France 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 politics of display== [[Image:Trianon1.jpg|thumb|right|200px| The Grand Trianon, 1678, Jules Hardouin-Mansart, architect]] 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 centralization the French government in an absolute monarchy. ===Costs=== 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 Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon, more funds were expended at Chateau of Marly than at Versailles. ===Benefits=== [[Image:GrandTrianondeCotteLoggia.jpg|thumb|right|Loggia of the Grand Trianon, Robert de Cotte, 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 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. ==Features== ===The Hall of Mirrors=== Otto_von_Bismarck_in_white.">Image:Reichsgruendung2.jpg|thumb|300px|Proclamation of the German Empire in the Hall of Mirrors, 1871. Otto von Bismarck in white. The Hall of Mirrors (French language: ''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 Charles 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 Jean-Baptiste Colbert to compete with the products of Venice. ==War Uses== 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 Imperial Germany 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. ==Post-royal: the monument-museum== At the Revolution the paintings and sculpture, like the crown jewels, were consigned to the new 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 de France, 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 Bourbon Dynasty, Restored. In 1830, the politic Louis-Philippe of France 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''".[http://www.insecula.com/us/musee/M0037.html] 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. ==The Would-Be Versailles== 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. In the small courts of Germany, echoes of Versailles sprang up, as ambitious as local funding permitted: at Bonn, Schloss Augustusburg, Brühl for the Archbishop-Elector of Cologne, at Mannheim, at Lubwigsburg Palace, at Schwetzingen near Heidelberg and at Karlsruhe; both the New Palace (''Neues Palais'') in Potsdam and the palace in formerly rural Charlottenburg near Berlin; Herrenhausen in Hanover; Neues Schloss Schleißheim near Munich; and the Würzburg Residence in Würzburg. One of the great German imitations of Versailles is the Kassel, built in 1786 by Wilhelm IX, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel. In the north there was Drottningholm, Stockholm. To the east there were Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna; Eszterháza in Hungary. In Italy, the "would-be Versailles" include Caserta near Naples, (by Luigi Vanvitelli, from 1752 onwards), Colorno and Stupenigi outside Turin, which had begun as a hunting lodge as Versailles had. In the Iberian peninsula there are two competitors for Versailles stand out:, La Granja near Madrid, and Queluz in Portugal. That the several "Polish Versailles" are aristocratic as well as royal is a sign of where true power lay where the great aristocrats elected their king. The royal version, Wilanów, begun in the late 17th century as the "New Villa" just south of Warsaw erected for John III of Poland, then, as Versailles was, extended in several building campaigns. Wilanow is symmetrically ranged round a ''cour d'honneur'' with two patterned ''parterres'' on stepped levels. Wilanow was inherited by a series of Polish aristocrats, and it inspired other great Polish magnates to imitation, as at Lazienki so that Italian and French architects and garden planners were drawn to Poland for employment. Wilanow had a rival in the aristocratic Branicki Palace in Bialystok. In England, even more than in Poland, the "would-be Versailles" tell of the final success of an aristocracy in curbing a monarchy. Royal palace projects of Late Stuart kings came to naught: Charles II of England envisaged a palace at Winchester that never left paper. St James's Palace in London remained a Tudor rabbit-warren. Renovations at Hampton Court for William III of England could not compare to an all-but-royal Chatsworth, and other Whig magnates built almost as grandly. The direct British answer to Versailles is Blenheim Palace, built as a national monument for Louis' nemesis, the Duke of Marlborough. The grandest, most impressive effort was perhaps that made by Peter I of Russia. In addition to Tsarskoe Selo and Pavlovsk, he had the Peterhof complex of buildings in gardens and parks built in the outskirts of Saint Petersburg (''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. The last shot in this war of sumptous architecture was probably fired by 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. ==See also== * Bureau du Roi ==External link== * [http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/14857 The Story of Versailles] by Francis Loring Payne, from Project Gutenberg Baroque architecture Castles in France Palaces in France Royal residences World Heritage Sites in France Gardens in France th:พระราชวังแวร์ซาย
Palais or chateau? User:Wetman 00:53, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC) The french government officials call it a chateau, and the Web site of this suburban manse is www.chateauversailles.fr. If somebody wants to split hairs yes, it is technically much more than a simple "chateau" and deserves the term "palais". But palais is not the correct name for it in France. User:AlainV 04:04, 2004 Feb 20 (UTC) The Louvre is a ''palais'' because it's in the city, like a ''palazzo''. A ''chateau'' is a castle (even when it's very open to the gardens) in the country, like a ''villa''. Goes back to Roman usage I think. In England there's only one "palace" besides royal ones (which are urban), and that's Blenheim Palace: part of the specialness of that national gift to Marlborough. In Germany there's the same distinction: you'd not find a ''palast'' in the country, no matter how grand. ''Schloss'' means "closed up" like "chateau". I wonder if I'm right about Germany... we'll soon know... User:Wetman 04:11, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC) :My guess, and this is only a guess, is that officially it is a ''chateau'' now because calling it a ''palais'' would imply that a French monarchy still exists, which it does not. This may seem like splitting hairs, but it is still an issue even after over 200 years, as you probably know. -- User:Decumanus 04:19, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC) ::I don't think that the Monarchy is an issue nowadays. However, I think that it's called a château... because that's how the people called it in the times of Louis XVI! User:David.Monniaux 11:01, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC) The two thick multivolume encyclopedic dictionaries (Quillet and Larousse) I have on hand make no city-country distinction to characterize "un palais". On the other hand when I do a Google image search on "palais" I get nothing but images of buildings in urban settings, albeit with some spectacular gardens sometimes. User:AlainV 05:31, 2004 Feb 20 (UTC) ::I've done some disambig at chateau and palace I think is historically accurate. Check for correctness and add to them please. User:Wetman 20:53, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC) I wish I had the time to add a German section and a Russian section and a Swedish section, and so on to the chateau article, since Versailles ignited a chateau-building war among monarchs. Alas, I have to get a minimum of sleep before going off to work tomorrow (and take marmot-prevention measures on my little plot of land before that) so the three paragraphs I added at the end of the Chateau de Versailles article will have to do for now. User:AlainV 02:36, 2004 Apr 2 (UTC) :Versailles is called in French ''Château de Versailles''. On plans from the 18th century the name appears as ''Chasteau de Versailles'', so this has always been the name that the French used for it. The word ''palais'' in French (word of same origin as the word palace in English) is reserved for offcial seats of power, such as a ''palais royal'' (royal palace), the ''palais des papes'' (palace of the popes), etc. This, I guess, comes from the fact that ''palais'' comes from Latin "palatium", which was the name of the palace of the emperor in Rome, seat of the government of the empire, name derived from the hill on which it was located, the Palatium. Now, back to Versailles: as shocking as it may be to many people, Versailles was actually NEVER the royal palace of France. It was the place where the king was living, but France being such a conservative country, the official location of the royal palace was not changed even after the king left to Versailles. The royal palace of France was Le Louvre, inside Paris, now the Louvre Museum. Until the Revolution, the ''Palais du Louvre'' was considered the official seat of the monarchy, even if it wasn't actually used. French kings were supposed to stay in Le Louvre for some days after they were crowned, and after they were married, as it was such a symbol. So clearly, in French, Versailles is just a ''château''. Now in English, it really doesn't matter which word is used, as this is not, well, French. The word that should be used is the word that is most common in English to call Versailles. I checked in Encyclopedia Britannica 1911 and they use "Palace of Versailles", so I guess this is the traditional way to call Versailles in English, the one that gained currency over time, and my view is that this word should be used, irrelevant of which word is actually used in French. User:Hardouin 03:48, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC) ::User:Hardouin should work that into a note for the entry itself. (Imagine ''Palace of Fontainbleau''!) User:Wetman 04:26, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC) ----- The first two photographs are too dark... Don't we have better ones? Should I take my camera and photograph the château? User:David.Monniaux 11:00, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC) ::Yes! Pick a slightly hazy day. Get some ''details'' and the sculptures in the ''bassins'' with shots down the allees. Yes! Yes! User:Wetman 20:53, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC) ==Hall of Mirrors== How can a separate article for the Hall of Mirrors be useful without the Versailles context? How about Candlestands in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles? User:Wetman 07:34, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC) :Why not? There is quite a lot to be said about this Hall, and it is often mentioned as an entity. After all, there is a great article called "List of statues on Charles Bridge", so why not one about the Hall? User:Olivier 03:46, Sep 16, 2004 (UTC) :: Okay, yes, quite a lot could be said. And the ''Escalier de la Reine'' too perhaps. And in the garden, the Basin of Diana. Why not, there are Raphael's Stanze and the Sistine Chapel... And the Oval Office... But, at a certain level of reduction, information disappears. You can keep magnifying a map; at a certain point, useable information disappears. List of statues on Charles Bridge does stand out among Wikipedia's lists: it is a ''complete'' list. User:Wetman 05:35, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC) == Le hameau de la Reine == Yes, the most recent photo is better, but what we really need is a public domain photo which gives a good feel of the mock-pastoral village setting in which the Queen liked to play-act as a sheperd girl. Something with several buildings like this: http://lepaingi.free.fr/perso/14.htm Or better still, one of the period paintings: http://rocheville.chez.tiscali.fr/page7/page07.htm --User:AlainV 01:02, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC) ==Cost== The statement: ''"Although it is unknown exactly how much Versailles cost to build because all the documents were destroyed, it is estimated that the cost was around 1 billion livre."'' was entered by someone wholly unaware that the minutely detailed archives of the ''Bâtimens du Roi'' as well as the ''Menus plaisirs'' survive and are known to ''everyone'' with the least passing interest in Versailles or the architecture and arts of France. The cost of the fringe on the stools in the ''Galerie des Glaces'' is known, the date of delivery, the craftsman responsible. Making stuff up like this is the equivalent of forging a signature. --User:Wetman 06:39, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC) :Totaly agree. That's why I am deleting it now. User:Hardouin 11:29, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC) ==Lifestyles of the rich and unfamous== "It's interesting to note that the marriage of the daughter of Lakshmi Mittal, the third richest person in the world, was held in this palace. The marriage has been famed as the most costly marriage ever, in the world." Does thisd add to a reader's understanding of versailles?--User:Wetman 12:18, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC) Not one bit. There is no mention if the current Versailles museum organisation holds similar receptions, no mention of any date, no mention of where, in the huge Versailles grounds and buildings the mariage was held and which parts (did they just pronounce vows? Was there a reception?) of the mariage were held, no mention of how much the mariage cost and how much was paid to the Versailles museum, etc. etc. --User:AlainV 17:05, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
See other meanings of words starting from letter:
Words begining with Palace_of_Versailles:
Palace_of_Versailles
Palace_of_Versailles
Palace of Versailles
[[Image:VersaillesCourHonneur.jpg|right|thumb|300px|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 — 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. ==History== Louis XIII of France 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. In 1660, Louis XIV of France, 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 Jules Hardouin 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 Andre Le Notre 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 of France and Louis XVI of France 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 politics of display== [[Image:Trianon1.jpg|thumb|right|200px| The Grand Trianon, 1678, Jules Hardouin-Mansart, architect]] 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 centralization the French government in an absolute monarchy. ===Costs=== 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 Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon, more funds were expended at Chateau of Marly than at Versailles. ===Benefits=== [[Image:GrandTrianondeCotteLoggia.jpg|thumb|right|Loggia of the Grand Trianon, Robert de Cotte, 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 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. ==Features== ===The Hall of Mirrors=== Otto_von_Bismarck_in_white.">Image:Reichsgruendung2.jpg|thumb|300px|Proclamation of the German Empire in the Hall of Mirrors, 1871. Otto von Bismarck in white. The Hall of Mirrors (French language: ''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 Charles 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 Jean-Baptiste Colbert to compete with the products of Venice. ==War Uses== 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 Imperial Germany 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. ==Post-royal: the monument-museum== At the Revolution the paintings and sculpture, like the crown jewels, were consigned to the new 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 de France, 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 Bourbon Dynasty, Restored. In 1830, the politic Louis-Philippe of France 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''".[http://www.insecula.com/us/musee/M0037.html] 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. ==The Would-Be Versailles== 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. In the small courts of Germany, echoes of Versailles sprang up, as ambitious as local funding permitted: at Bonn, Schloss Augustusburg, Brühl for the Archbishop-Elector of Cologne, at Mannheim, at Lubwigsburg Palace, at Schwetzingen near Heidelberg and at Karlsruhe; both the New Palace (''Neues Palais'') in Potsdam and the palace in formerly rural Charlottenburg near Berlin; Herrenhausen in Hanover; Neues Schloss Schleißheim near Munich; and the Würzburg Residence in Würzburg. One of the great German imitations of Versailles is the Kassel, built in 1786 by Wilhelm IX, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel. In the north there was Drottningholm, Stockholm. To the east there were Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna; Eszterháza in Hungary. In Italy, the "would-be Versailles" include Caserta near Naples, (by Luigi Vanvitelli, from 1752 onwards), Colorno and Stupenigi outside Turin, which had begun as a hunting lodge as Versailles had. In the Iberian peninsula there are two competitors for Versailles stand out:, La Granja near Madrid, and Queluz in Portugal. That the several "Polish Versailles" are aristocratic as well as royal is a sign of where true power lay where the great aristocrats elected their king. The royal version, Wilanów, begun in the late 17th century as the "New Villa" just south of Warsaw erected for John III of Poland, then, as Versailles was, extended in several building campaigns. Wilanow is symmetrically ranged round a ''cour d'honneur'' with two patterned ''parterres'' on stepped levels. Wilanow was inherited by a series of Polish aristocrats, and it inspired other great Polish magnates to imitation, as at Lazienki so that Italian and French architects and garden planners were drawn to Poland for employment. Wilanow had a rival in the aristocratic Branicki Palace in Bialystok. In England, even more than in Poland, the "would-be Versailles" tell of the final success of an aristocracy in curbing a monarchy. Royal palace projects of Late Stuart kings came to naught: Charles II of England envisaged a palace at Winchester that never left paper. St James's Palace in London remained a Tudor rabbit-warren. Renovations at Hampton Court for William III of England could not compare to an all-but-royal Chatsworth, and other Whig magnates built almost as grandly. The direct British answer to Versailles is Blenheim Palace, built as a national monument for Louis' nemesis, the Duke of Marlborough. The grandest, most impressive effort was perhaps that made by Peter I of Russia. In addition to Tsarskoe Selo and Pavlovsk, he had the Peterhof complex of buildings in gardens and parks built in the outskirts of Saint Petersburg (''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. The last shot in this war of sumptous architecture was probably fired by 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. ==See also== * Bureau du Roi ==External link== * [http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/14857 The Story of Versailles] by Francis Loring Payne, from Project Gutenberg Baroque architecture Castles in France Palaces in France Royal residences World Heritage Sites in France Gardens in France th:พระราชวังแวร์ซาย
Palace of Versailles
Palais or chateau? User:Wetman 00:53, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC) The french government officials call it a chateau, and the Web site of this suburban manse is www.chateauversailles.fr. If somebody wants to split hairs yes, it is technically much more than a simple "chateau" and deserves the term "palais". But palais is not the correct name for it in France. User:AlainV 04:04, 2004 Feb 20 (UTC) The Louvre is a ''palais'' because it's in the city, like a ''palazzo''. A ''chateau'' is a castle (even when it's very open to the gardens) in the country, like a ''villa''. Goes back to Roman usage I think. In England there's only one "palace" besides royal ones (which are urban), and that's Blenheim Palace: part of the specialness of that national gift to Marlborough. In Germany there's the same distinction: you'd not find a ''palast'' in the country, no matter how grand. ''Schloss'' means "closed up" like "chateau". I wonder if I'm right about Germany... we'll soon know... User:Wetman 04:11, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC) :My guess, and this is only a guess, is that officially it is a ''chateau'' now because calling it a ''palais'' would imply that a French monarchy still exists, which it does not. This may seem like splitting hairs, but it is still an issue even after over 200 years, as you probably know. -- User:Decumanus 04:19, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC) ::I don't think that the Monarchy is an issue nowadays. However, I think that it's called a château... because that's how the people called it in the times of Louis XVI! User:David.Monniaux 11:01, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC) The two thick multivolume encyclopedic dictionaries (Quillet and Larousse) I have on hand make no city-country distinction to characterize "un palais". On the other hand when I do a Google image search on "palais" I get nothing but images of buildings in urban settings, albeit with some spectacular gardens sometimes. User:AlainV 05:31, 2004 Feb 20 (UTC) ::I've done some disambig at chateau and palace I think is historically accurate. Check for correctness and add to them please. User:Wetman 20:53, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC) I wish I had the time to add a German section and a Russian section and a Swedish section, and so on to the chateau article, since Versailles ignited a chateau-building war among monarchs. Alas, I have to get a minimum of sleep before going off to work tomorrow (and take marmot-prevention measures on my little plot of land before that) so the three paragraphs I added at the end of the Chateau de Versailles article will have to do for now. User:AlainV 02:36, 2004 Apr 2 (UTC) :Versailles is called in French ''Château de Versailles''. On plans from the 18th century the name appears as ''Chasteau de Versailles'', so this has always been the name that the French used for it. The word ''palais'' in French (word of same origin as the word palace in English) is reserved for offcial seats of power, such as a ''palais royal'' (royal palace), the ''palais des papes'' (palace of the popes), etc. This, I guess, comes from the fact that ''palais'' comes from Latin "palatium", which was the name of the palace of the emperor in Rome, seat of the government of the empire, name derived from the hill on which it was located, the Palatium. Now, back to Versailles: as shocking as it may be to many people, Versailles was actually NEVER the royal palace of France. It was the place where the king was living, but France being such a conservative country, the official location of the royal palace was not changed even after the king left to Versailles. The royal palace of France was Le Louvre, inside Paris, now the Louvre Museum. Until the Revolution, the ''Palais du Louvre'' was considered the official seat of the monarchy, even if it wasn't actually used. French kings were supposed to stay in Le Louvre for some days after they were crowned, and after they were married, as it was such a symbol. So clearly, in French, Versailles is just a ''château''. Now in English, it really doesn't matter which word is used, as this is not, well, French. The word that should be used is the word that is most common in English to call Versailles. I checked in Encyclopedia Britannica 1911 and they use "Palace of Versailles", so I guess this is the traditional way to call Versailles in English, the one that gained currency over time, and my view is that this word should be used, irrelevant of which word is actually used in French. User:Hardouin 03:48, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC) ::User:Hardouin should work that into a note for the entry itself. (Imagine ''Palace of Fontainbleau''!) User:Wetman 04:26, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC) ----- The first two photographs are too dark... Don't we have better ones? Should I take my camera and photograph the château? User:David.Monniaux 11:00, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC) ::Yes! Pick a slightly hazy day. Get some ''details'' and the sculptures in the ''bassins'' with shots down the allees. Yes! Yes! User:Wetman 20:53, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC) ==Hall of Mirrors== How can a separate article for the Hall of Mirrors be useful without the Versailles context? How about Candlestands in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles? User:Wetman 07:34, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC) :Why not? There is quite a lot to be said about this Hall, and it is often mentioned as an entity. After all, there is a great article called "List of statues on Charles Bridge", so why not one about the Hall? User:Olivier 03:46, Sep 16, 2004 (UTC) :: Okay, yes, quite a lot could be said. And the ''Escalier de la Reine'' too perhaps. And in the garden, the Basin of Diana. Why not, there are Raphael's Stanze and the Sistine Chapel... And the Oval Office... But, at a certain level of reduction, information disappears. You can keep magnifying a map; at a certain point, useable information disappears. List of statues on Charles Bridge does stand out among Wikipedia's lists: it is a ''complete'' list. User:Wetman 05:35, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC) == Le hameau de la Reine == Yes, the most recent photo is better, but what we really need is a public domain photo which gives a good feel of the mock-pastoral village setting in which the Queen liked to play-act as a sheperd girl. Something with several buildings like this: http://lepaingi.free.fr/perso/14.htm Or better still, one of the period paintings: http://rocheville.chez.tiscali.fr/page7/page07.htm --User:AlainV 01:02, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC) ==Cost== The statement: ''"Although it is unknown exactly how much Versailles cost to build because all the documents were destroyed, it is estimated that the cost was around 1 billion livre."'' was entered by someone wholly unaware that the minutely detailed archives of the ''Bâtimens du Roi'' as well as the ''Menus plaisirs'' survive and are known to ''everyone'' with the least passing interest in Versailles or the architecture and arts of France. The cost of the fringe on the stools in the ''Galerie des Glaces'' is known, the date of delivery, the craftsman responsible. Making stuff up like this is the equivalent of forging a signature. --User:Wetman 06:39, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC) :Totaly agree. That's why I am deleting it now. User:Hardouin 11:29, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC) ==Lifestyles of the rich and unfamous== "It's interesting to note that the marriage of the daughter of Lakshmi Mittal, the third richest person in the world, was held in this palace. The marriage has been famed as the most costly marriage ever, in the world." Does thisd add to a reader's understanding of versailles?--User:Wetman 12:18, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC) Not one bit. There is no mention if the current Versailles museum organisation holds similar receptions, no mention of any date, no mention of where, in the huge Versailles grounds and buildings the mariage was held and which parts (did they just pronounce vows? Was there a reception?) of the mariage were held, no mention of how much the mariage cost and how much was paid to the Versailles museum, etc. etc. --User:AlainV 17:05, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
See other meanings of words starting from letter:
P
PA | PB | PC | PD | PE | PF | PG | PH | PI | PJ | PK | PL | PM | PN | PO | PR | PS | PT | PU | PW | PX | PY | PZ |Words begining with Palace_of_Versailles:
Palace_of_Versailles
Palace_of_Versailles
These materials are based on Wikipedia and licensed under the GNU FDL
YouTube.com videos better site than Turbo Tax 2007
