The Palace of Versailles — a modest hunting lodge

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Versailles Quick Facts

* In 1624, Louis XIII, the king of France, began the building of a hunting lodge in the small village of Versailles
* There are 18,000 square meters of history in the Palace of Versailles
* Versailles is half an hour by rail from the Gare St Lazarre station in Paris

The Palace of Versailles began as a modest hunting lodge. Well, as modest a lodge as one could expect from a French King. Then Louis XIV enlarged and enrobed the old lodge, turning it into the great Chateau we know today. In 1837, Louis-Philippe converted the whole deal to a museum of French History in what may have been the historic starting point for the development of mass tourism.

Louis XIV

Louis XIII’s successor, Louis XIV, had a great interest in Versailles. He settled on the royal hunting lodge at Versailles and over the following decades had it expanded into one of the largest palaces in the world (Félibien, 1703; Marie, 1972; Verlet, 1985). Beginning in 1661, the architect Louis Le Vau, landscape architect André Le Nôtre, and painter-decorator Charles Le Brun began a detailed renovation and expansion of the château. This was done to fulfill Louis XIV’s desire to establish a new centre for the royal court. 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.

By moving his court and government to Versailles, Louis XIV hoped to extract more control of the government from the nobility, and to distance himself from the population of Paris. All the power of France emanated from this center: there were government offices here, as well as the homes of thousands of courtiers, their retinues, and all the attendant functionaries of court (Solnon, 1987). 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 (Bluche, 1986, 1991; Bendix, 1978; Solnon, 1987). The meticulous and strict court etiquette that Louis established, which overwhelmed his heirs with its petty boredom, was epitomised in the elaborate ceremonies and exacting procedures that accompanied his rising in the morning, known as the Lever, divided into a petit lever for the most important and a grand lever for the whole court. Like other French court manners, étiquette was quickly imitated in other European courts (Benichou, 1948; Bluche, 1991; Solnon 1987).
Evolution of Versailles

The expansion of the château became synonymous with the absolutism of Louis XIV (Bluche, 1986, 1991). In 1661, following the death of Cardinal Mazarin, chief minister of the government, Louis had declared that he would be his own chief minister. The idea of establishing the court at Versailles was conceived to ensure that all of his advisors and provincial rulers would be kept close to him. He feared that they would rise up against him and start a revolt. He thought that if he kept all of his potential threats near him, that they would be powerless. After the disgrace of Nicolas Fouquet in 1661 — Louis claimed the finance minister would not have been able to build his grand château at Vaux-le-Vicomte without having embezzled from the crown — Louis, after the confiscation of Fouquet’s state, employed the talents of Le Vau, Le Nôtre, and Le Brun, who all had worked on Vaux-le-Vicomte, for his building campaigns at Versailles and elsewhere. For Versailles, there were four distinct building campaigns (after minor alterations and enlargements had been executed on the château and the gardens in 1662-1663), all of which corresponded to Louis XIV’s wars (Bluche, 1986, 1991; Verlet, 1985).
First building campaign

The first building campaign (1664–1668) commenced with the Plaisirs de l’Île enchantée of 1664, a fête that was held between 7 and 13 May 1664. The fête was ostensibly given to celebrate the two queens of France — Anne of Austria, the Queen Mother, and Marie-Thérèse, Louis XIV’s wife, but in reality honored the king’s mistress, Louise de La Vallière. The celebration of the Plaisirs de l’Île enchantée is often regarded as a prelude to the War of Devolution, which Louis waged against Spain. The first building campaign (1664–1668) witnessed alterations in the château and gardens in order to accommodate the 600 guests invited to the party (Nolhac, 1899, 1901; Marie, 1968; Verlet, 1985).Error processing request