Versailles Castle

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• The New Chateau

Le Vau was once again charged with carrying out the work. From 1668 to 1670 he built the 'envelope', which Saint-Simon severely criticized for contrasting with the old chateau: 'the beautiful and the ugly, the vast and the restricted, were stitched together'. Indeed, Le Vau's 'envelope' entailed wrapping the old chateau in a second building whose uniformly white stone facades served as a fine garden setting. Work on this building, whose central terrace was inspired by Italian baroque villas, was taken up by François d'Orbay on Le Vau's death in 1670. It houses the State Apartments.

• The Old Chateau

Back in 1623, Louis XIII – father of Louis XIV – built a 'hunting lodge, a little gentleman's chateau' of brick, stone, and slate at Versailles. The king liked it so much that he soon had it enlarged by his 'royal engineer and architect', Philibert Le Roy (this early chateau survives in the buildings that flank the Marble Courtyard). Then from 1661 to 1668 the young Louis XIV, known as the Sun King, had his own architect, Louis Le Vau, embellish the residence. Yet this little house of cards', as the memorialist Duc de Saint-Simon called it, remained too small. Extensions were deemed necessary.

• Official Residence

In May 6, 1682, Versailles became the official residence of the Court of France, supplanting the palaces at the Louvre and Saint-Germain-en-Laye. From 1678 to 1684, meanwhile, the terrace of the new chateau was transformed into the Hall of Mirrors, symbolizing the power of the absolute monarch. Feverish building activity then gave birth to the North and South Wings, the Orangery, Stables, and Grand Lodgings; the vast construction site was headed by royal architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart. The last major feature built during the reign of Louis XIV, the Chapel Royal, was completed in 1710 by Robert de Cotte.

• The Grand Reconstruction Project

Toward the end of the reign of Louis XV, around 1770, Jacques-Ange Gabriel built the Opera and began reworking all the facades on the chateau's town side. Only the right wing, which threatened to crumble, was executed. It strictly obeyed the rules of French classical architecture, as seen in its colonnaded pavilion. Inside, the grand staircase known as Grand Degré was begun in 1772, but only recently completed in 1985. A symmetrical pavilion on the other side of the courtyard, planned by Napoleon Ier, was finally erected in 1820.

• The Grand Apartment (Grand Appartement du Roi)

'And since the Sun is the emblem of the King, seven planets were taken to serve as the subject of the paintings of the seven salons of this apartment' (Félibien des Avaux, 1674). The Grand Apartment glorified the Sun King. A room known as the Abundance Salon led to other salons_Venus, Diana, Mars, Mercury, and Apollo_each dedicated to a heavenly body. That is why they were originally called the Apartment of the Planets when the New Chateau was being built. In 1710, another salon was added, this time dedicated to the mythological hero Hercules. It was designed to house Veronese's Christ at Supper with Simon, which the Republic of Venice offered to Louis XIV in 1664 (restored in 1997). The Hercules Salon is richly decorated in marble and chased bronze over the fireplace (the finest in the chateau), making it a rival to the Hall of Mirrors. The masterful painting on the ceiling, done by François Lemoyne from 1733 to 1736, shows The Apotheosis of Hercules.

• Charles Le Brun, Premier Peintre

'All the arts work under him'. As Premier Peintre, or Chief Painter to the King, Charles Le Brun (1619-1690) directed the team of artists who decorated the ceilings at Versailles. All were members of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, which Le Brun vigorously headed. As a versatile decorative artist who also ran the crafts manufactory at Les Gobelins, Le Brun was able to design the entire decoration of a room, down to the details on a door-lock

• The Hall of Mirrors (La Galerie des Glaces)

The Hall of Mirrors, erected to the glory of Louis XIV and now the chief masterpiece of Versailles, was begun in 1678 when the chateau became the official residence, disrupting the order of the salons known as the Apartment of the Planets. On the signing of the Treaty of Nijmegen, which represented the highpoint of his reign, Louis XIV ordered Le Brun to depict his government's accomplishments on the ceiling of the hall. Le Brun designed thirty compositions, framed by stucco-work, showing the monarch in various guises: Roman emperor, great administrator of the kingdom, and victor over foreign powers.

• The Hall of Mirrors : Close-Up on a Masterpiece

The hall measures 73 metres long, 10.5 metres wide, and 12.3 metres high. At one end is the Salon of War, at the other is the Salon of Peace. Seventeen windows overlooking the garden are matched by seventeen arcaded mirrors along the wall. These exceptionally large mirrors were made in a Paris worksho
p founded by Colbert to compete with Venice's glass factories. The arches are set on marble pilasters whose gilded bronze capitals are decorated with the symbols of France_the fleur-de-lys and the Gallic cockerel_according to the new 'French order' of architecture invented by Le Brun. The finest ancient statues in Louis XIV's collection, as well as busts of Roman emperors, dot the walls. The solid silver tables, lamp holders, and orange-tree pots that originally adorned the gallery, however, were all unfortunately melted down by Louis XIV himself in order to finance his wars.

The Hall of Mirrors was not only the symbolic focus of the kingdom during the ancien régime, but also continued to play a key historical role after the Revolution. In 1919, the First World War officially ended when Germany signed the Treaty of Versailles in the Hall of Mirrors; Hungary signed the treaty the following year in the Grand Trianon.

• The Queen's Suite (Grand Appartement de la Reine)

The king's 'Grand Apartment' was soon used only for state purposes, whereas the first ladies of France continued to live in the Queen's Suite. Maria Theresa, wife of Louis XIV, lived there until her early death in 1683, as did Maria Leszczinska, wife of Louis XV (who later modified the layout). Finally, Marie-Antoinette refurbished the decoration In the order dictated by royal protocol, the suite was arranged as follows: Queen's Guards Room, Antechamber, Peers' Salon, and Bedchamber. The paintings on the Italian-style ceilings, showing the virtues of queens of antiquity, mostly date from the reign of Louis XIV. The marble that originally lined the walls has largely been replaced by woodwork.

• The Queen's Bedchamber

It still looks today as it did when Marie-Antoinette left Versailles during the French Revolution in 1789. The Rococo-style woodwork, as well as the ceiling painting by François Boucher (1703-1770) were commissioned around 1730 by Louis XV in order to please his wife, Maria Leszczinska. Marie-Antoinette found this terribly old-fashioned, and decided to replace all the furnishings, notably commissioning silk hangings woven in patterns of lilacs and peacock feathers, garnishing the alcove and the enormous four-poster bed (restored in 1976)

THE TRIANON

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THE PARK AND GARDENS

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