Château de Marly

Small rooms meant less company, and simplified protocol; courtiers, who fought among themselves for invitations to Marly, were housed in a revolutionary design of twelve pavilions built in matching pairs flanking the central sheets of water, which were fed one from the other by formalized cascades (illustration, right).

Only the foundation of Jules Hardouin-Mansart's small château the pavillon du Roi remains at the top of the slope in Marly park.

[3] Robert Berger has demonstrated that the design of Marly was a full collaboration between Jules Hardouin-Mansart and the Premier peintre du Roi Charles Le Brun, who were concurrently working on the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.

Throughout the rest of his life, Louis continued to embellish the wooded park, with wide straight rides, in which ladies or the infirm might follow the hunt, at some distance, in a carriage, and with more profligate waterworks than waterless Versailles could provide: the Rivière or Grande Cascade dates to 1697–1698.

Napoleon bought back the estate the following year; the empty gardens and the surrounding woodland park still belong to the State.

At the end of the 19th century, several connoisseurs purchased leases on the individual garçonnières, cleaned up the overgrowth, recovered some bruised and broken statuary and recreated small gardens among the ruins: Alexandre Dumas, fils and the playwright and collector of 18th-century furnishings Victorien Sardou.

The water then flowed either to fill the cascade at Marly or drive the fountains at Versailles — the latter, after passing through an elaborate underground network of reservoirs and aqueducts.

The machine could only deliver sufficient pressure to satisfy either Marly or Versailles, and invariably the King's demands received priority.