Versailles

The Chateau and Gardens of Versailles is one of the most prestigious monuments of the world’s artistic heritage, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Versailles is the finest and most complete achievement of 17th century French art and symbolizes the absolute power of the Bourbon monarchs of France and the magnificence of the reigns of Louis XIV, the “Sun King”, (1643-1715), Louis XV (1715-1774) and Louis XVI (1774-1792).

Louis XIV’s childhood had been spent in the fear and disorder of a civil war between rival bands of aristocrats, the ‘Fronde’, and associated Paris with intrigue and violence. He wanted a Palace outside, but near, Paris, and chose to build at Versailles, where his father, Louis XIII (1601-1643), had built a simple hunting lodge. Louis XIV wanted to organize and completely control a government of France centered upon his person, an absolute monarchy.

Visiting his finance minister, Nicolas Fouquet, who had built the finest chateau and garden in France at Vaux-le-Vicomte, he was entertained with a fete which was one of the most magnificent in French history, Louis decided to build a chateau which was even grander and finer. Fouquet’s achievement was his undoing as together with his mismanagement of funds and Louis made jealous by the magnificent chateau and fete, he was arrested in 1661, banished and then sentenced to life imprisonment.

Using the same ‘design team’ as Fouquet – architect Louis Le Vau, decorator Charles Le Brun, and garden designer Andre Le Notre - Versailles was designed to be the most glorious palace in Europe. It is still dazzling in its opulence. Louis IV took up residence in May 1682 before construction was completed and while Mansart, the architect who took over from Le Vau, was still overseeing 36,000 laborers and soldiers. Versailles would become the official residence of the Court of France, supplanting the Louvre palaces, and at its height 20,000 courtiers lived there. The Chateau was added to in the 18th century, during the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI. The royal family and the court were forced to leave Versailles on October 6, 1789, after the first days of the French Revolution.