The Palace Of Versailles

The Palace of Versailles or simplyVersailles, is a royal château in Versailles in the Île-de-France region of France. In French it is the Château de Versailles. When the château was built, Versailles was a country village; today, however, it is a suburb of Paris, some 20 kilometres southwest of the French capital. 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. Versailles is therefore famous not only as a building, but as a symbol of the system of absolute monarchy of the Ancien Régime. The earliest mention of the name of Versailles is in a document dated 1038, relating to the village of Versailles. In 1575,the seigneury of Versailles was bought by Albert de Gondi, a naturalized Florentine, who invited Louis XIII on several hunting trips in the forests surrounding Versailles. Pleased with the location, Louis ordered the construction of a hunting lodge in 1624. Eight years later, Louis obtained the seigneury of Versailles from the Gondi family and began to make enlargements to the château. Thisstructure would become the core of the new palace.[2] Louis XIII's successor, Louis XIV, had it expanded into one of the largest palaces in the world.[3] Following the Treaties of Nijmegen in 1678, he began to gradually move the court to Versailles. The court was officially established there on 6 May 1682.[4]
After the disgrace of Nicolas Fouquet in 1661, Louis confiscated Fouquet’s estate andemployed the talents of Le Vau, Le Nôtre, and Le Brun, who all had worked on Fouquet’s grand château Vaux-le-Vicomte, for his building campaigns at Versailles and elsewhere. For Versailles, there were four distinct building campaigns.[5]
The first building campaign (1664–1668) commenced with the Plaisirs de l’Île enchantée (Pleasures of the Enchanted Island) of 1664, a fête that was held between 7 and13 May 1664. The first building campaign (1664–1668) involved alterations in the château and gardens to accommodate the 600 guests invited to the party. (Nolhac, 1899, 1901; Marie, 1968; Verlet, 1985)
The second building campaign (1669–1672) was inaugurated with the signing of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which ended the War of Devolution. During this campaign, the château began to assume someof the appearance that it has today. The most important modification of the château was Le Vau’s envelope of Louis XIII’s hunting lodge. (Nolhac, 1901; Marie, 1972; Verlet, 1985) Significant to the design and construction of the grands appartements is that the rooms of both apartments are of the same configuration and dimensions – a hitherto unprecedented feature in French palace design. Boththe grand appartement du roi and the grand appartement de la reine formed a suite of seven enfilade rooms. The decoration of the rooms, which was conducted under Le Brun's direction, depicted the "heroic actions of the king" and were represented in allegorical form by the actions of historical figures from the antique past (Alexander the Great, Augustus, Cyrus, etc.). (Berger, 1986; Félibien, 1674;Verlet, 1985)
With the signing of the Treaty of Nijmegen in 1678, which ended the Dutch War, the third building campaign at Versailles began (1678–1684). Under the direction of the architect, Jules Hardouin-Mansart, the Palace of Versailles acquired much of the look that it has today. In addition to the Hall of Mirrors, Hardouin-Mansart designed the north and south wings and the Orangerie. Le Brunwas occupied not only with the interior decoration of the new additions of the palace, but also collaborated with Le Nôtre's in landscaping the palace gardens (Berger, 1985; Thompson, 2006; Verlet, 1985).

Soon after the defeat of the War of the League of Augsburg (1688–1697), Louis XIV undertook his last building campaign at Versailles. The fourth building campaign (1699–1710) concentrated...