History of the Palace of Versailles

The court of Versailles was the centre of political power in France from 1682, when Louis XIV moved from Paris, until the royal family was forced to return to the capital in October 1789 after the beginning of the French Revolution.

[11] By requiring that nobles of a certain rank and position spend time each year at Versailles, Louis prevented them from developing their own regional power at the expense of his own and kept them from countering his efforts to centralise the French government in an absolute monarchy.

For a time between late 1668 and early 1669, when the ground floor of the enveloppe was being constructed, Louis XIV intended to completely demolish his father's palace and replace it with a monumental forecourt.

The ground floor of the northern part of the château neuf was occupied by the appartement des bains, which included a sunken octagonal tub with hot and cold running water.

The King's brother and sister-in-law, Philippe I, Duke of Orléans and Elizabeth Charlotte, Madame Palatine occupied apartments on the ground floor of the southern part of the château neuf.

The South Wing is 176 yards long (528 feet), and was built with three interior courtyards capable of housing servants and aristocrats in addition to the Princes of the Blood, who were given luxurious apartments behind the west façade overlooking the gardens.

[26] Both wings replicated the Italianate façade of Le Vau's enveloppe on their western sides, creating a uniform and symmetrical appearance on the garden front.

The Orangerie required excavating the hillside descending south from the palace, which allowed the construction of a 500 foot long arcaded gallery with shorter wings extending at right angles, buttressed against the hill above.

Far from being simply utilitarian, Hardouin-Mansart designed two Neoclassical buildings of equal size and grandeur, capable of housing thousands of horses and the nearly 1,500 men employed in the household department of the Royal Stables.

[35] For the new appartement du roi, Louis chose the set of eight rooms on the piano nobile behind the west façade of the Cour de Marbre which had once belonged to his father in the old château.

[37] Soon after the crushing defeat of the War of the League of Augsburg (1688–1697) and owing possibly to the pious influence of Madame de Maintenon, Louis XIV undertook his last building campaign at Versailles.

His time at Versailles was used to observe and study the palace and gardens, which he later used as a source of inspiration when he built Peterhof on the Bay of Finland, west of Saint Petersburg.

[43] The case for removing the Escalier was strengthened by the poor condition of the cast bronze support for the massive skylight over the staircase, which under Louis XIV had been an experimental wonder which allowed for an unprecedented span of the glass.

Benjamin Franklin described an air of "magnificence and negligence" when he visited, while royal architects warned of the dangerous condition of outbuildings like the Petit and Grand Ecurie (stables), where rotting timber in 1770 necessitated urgent rebuilding work.

[49] This left scant resources available to devote towards the long-nurtured dream of rebuilding the Paris-facing wings of the Enveloppe enclosing the Marble and Royal Courts, known as the "Grand Project".

These additional floors, which loomed awkwardly above the Cour de Marbre and the main roofline of the palace, were intended to be temporary pending the long-awaited Grand Project.

In response to the order, the mayor of Versailles and the municipal council met to draft a letter to Louis XVI in which they stated that if the furniture was removed, it would certainly precipitate economic ruin on the city.

Eight months later, however, the fate of Versailles was sealed: on 21 June 1791, Louis XVI was arrested at Varennes after which the Legislative Assembly accordingly declared that all possessions of the royal family had been abandoned.

On 28 floréal an II (5 May 1794) the Convention decreed that the palace and gardens of Versailles, as well as other former royal residences in the environs, would not be sold but placed under the care of the Republic for the public good.

[58] One of Dumont's first appointments was that of Huges Lagarde (10 messidor an III (28 June 1795), a wealthy soap merchant from Marseille with strong political connections, as bibliographer of the museum.

Mirrors were assigned by the finance ministry for payment of debts of the Republic and draperies, upholstery, and fringes were confiscated and sent to the mint to recoup the gold and silver used in their manufacture.

Despite its designation as a museum, Versailles served as an annex to the Hôtel des Invalides pursuant to the decree of 7 frimaire an VIII (28 November 1799), which commandeered part of the palace and which had wounded soldiers being housed in the petit appartement du roi.

Paintings and art work that had previously been assigned to Muséum national and the Musée spécial de l'École française were systematically dispersed to other locations, and eventually the museum was closed.

Areas of the gardens were replanted but no significant restoration and modifications of the interiors were undertaken, despite the fact that Louis XVIII would often visit the palace and walk through the vacant rooms.

[68] The museum was officially inaugurated on 10 June 1837 as part of the festivities that surrounded the marriage of the Prince royal, Ferdinand-Philippe d'Orléans with princess Hélène of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and represented one of the most ambitious and costly undertakings of Louis-Philippe's reign.

[69] The southern wing (Aile du Midi) was given over to the Galerie des Batailles (Hall of Battles), which necessitated the demolition of most of the apartments of the Princes of the Blood who lived in this part of the palace during the Ancien Régime.

Part of the northern wing (Aile du Nord) was converted to the Salle des Croisades, a room dedicated to famous knights of the Crusades and decorated with their names and coats of arms.

[73] The symbolism of an enemy Prussian being crowned at Versailles, in a room whose ceiling depicts Louis XIV's victories against the Germans, was a source of bitter humiliation for the French.

Pierre de Nolhac resigned his long held position as Curator of Versailles in 1920; his colleague André Pératé assumed the head role and oversaw the palace for the next 13 years.

Jeff Koons said that "I hope the juxtaposition of today's surfaces, represented by my work, with the architecture and fine arts of Versailles will be an exciting interaction for the viewer.