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VERSAILLES Versailles , formerly de facto capital of the kingdom of France, is now a wealthy suburb of Paris and is still an important administrative and judicial center. The city (commune) of Versailles, located in the western suburbs of Paris, 17.1 km. (10.6 miles) from the center of Paris, is the préfecture (capital) of the Yvelines département. The population of the city according to 2005 estimates was 86,400 inhabitants, down from a peak of 94,145 inhabitants in 1975. Versailles is made world-famous by the Château de Versailles, from the forecourt of which the city has grown NAME During the French Revolution, the city was renamed Berceau-de-la-Liberté, meaning "Cradle of Liberty." SEAT OF POWER Versailles was the unofficial capital city of the kingdom of France from May 1682 (when King Louis XIV moved the court and government permanently to Versailles) until September 1715 (death of Louis XIV and regency, with the regent Philippe d'Orléans returning to Paris), and then again from June 1722 (when Louis XV returned to Versailles permanently) to October 1789 (when Louis XVI was forced to move back to Paris by the people of Paris). During the entire period, Paris remained the official capital city of France, and the official royal palace was the Palace of the Louvre, but in practice government affairs were conducted from Versailles, and Versailles was regarded as the real capital city. Versailles became again the unofficial capital city of France from March 1871 (when the French government took refuge in Versailles due to the insurrection of the Paris Commune) until November 1879 (when the newly elected left-wing republicans relocated the government and parliament to Paris). Versailles was made the préfecture (capital) of the Seine-et-Oise département at its inception in March 1790 (Seine-et-Oise had approximately 100,400 inhabitants at its creation). By the 1960s, with the growth of the Paris suburbs, the Seine-et-Oise département had reached almost 3 million inhabitants and was deemed too large and ungovernable, and thus it was split into three départements in January 1968. Versailles was made the préfecture of the Yvelines département, the largest chunk of the former Seine-et-Oise département. At the 1999 census the Yvelines département had 1,354,304 inhabitants. Versailles is the seat of a Roman Catholic diocese (bishopric) which was created in 1790. The diocese of Versailles is subordinate to the archdiocese of Paris. In 1975 Versailles was made the seat of a Court of Appeal whose jurisdiction covers the western suburbs of Paris. Since 1972, Versailles has been the seat of one of France's 30 nationwide académies (districts) of the Ministry of National Education. The académie de Versailles, the largest of France's 30 académies by its number of pupils and students, is in charge of supervising all the elementary schools and high schools of the western suburbs of Paris. Versailles is also an important node for the French army, a tradition going back to the monarchy, with for instance the military camp of Satory and other institutions. GEOGRAPHY The city of Versailles (commune) has an area of 26.18 km² (10.11 mile², or 6,469 acres), which is a quarter of the area of the city of Paris. In 1999, the city of Versailles had a population density of 3,275/km² (8,481/mile²), whereas the city of Paris had a density of 20,164/km² (52,225/mile²). Born out of the will of a king, the city has a rational and symmetrical grid of streets. For the standards of the 18th century, Versailles was a very modern European city. Versailles was used as a model for the building of Washington DC by Pierre Charles L'Enfant HISTORY The name of Versailles appears for the first time in a medieval document dated A.D. 1038. In the feudal system of medieval France, the lords of Versailles came directly under the king of France, with no intermediary overlords between them and the king; yet they were not very important lords. In the end of the 11th century the village curled around a medieval castle and the Saint Julien church. Its farming activity and its location on the road from Paris to Dreux and Normandy brought prosperity to the village, culminating in the end of the 13th century, the so-called "century of Saint Louis", famous for the prosperity of northern France and the building of gothic cathedrals. The 14th century brought the Black Plague and the Hundred Years' War, and with it death and destruction. At the end of the Hundred Years' War in the 15th century, the village started to recover, with a population of only 100 inhabitants. In
1561, Martial de Loménie, secretary of state for finances under
King Charles IX, became lord of Versailles. He obtained permission to
establish four annual fairs and a weekly market on Thursdays. The population
of Versailles was 500 inhabitants. Martial de Loménie was murdered
during the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre (August 24, 1572). In 1575
Albert de Gondi, a man from Florence who had come to France along with
Catherine de' Medici, bought the seigneury of Versailles. Louis XIII
This
small manor was the site of the famous historical event called the Day
of the Dupes, on November 10, 1630, when the party of the queen mother
was defeated and Richelieu was confirmed as prime minister. Eventually,
in 1632, the king obtained the seigneury of Versailles altogether from
the Gondi. The castle was enlarged between 1632 and 1634. At the death
of Louis XIII in 1643 the village had 1,000 inhabitants. At the same time, a new city was emerging from the ground, resulting from an ingenious decree of the king dated May 22, 1671, whereby the king authorized anyone to acquire a lot in the new city for free. There were only two conditions to acquire a lot: 1- a token tax of 5 shillings (5 sols) per arpent of land should be paid every year (in 2005 US dollars, that's $0.03 per 1,000 sq ft (93 m²) per year); 2- a house should be built on the lot according to the plans and models established by the Surintendant des Bâtiments du Roi (architect in chief of the royal demesne). The plans provided for a city built symmetrically with respect to the Avenue de Paris (which starts from the entrance of the castle). The roofs of the buildings and houses of the new city were not to exceed the level of the Marble Courtyard, at the entrance of the castle (built above a hill dominating the city), so that the perspective from the windows of the castle would not be obstructed. The
old village and the Saint Julien church were destroyed to make room
for buildings housing the administrative services managing the daily
life in the castle. On both sides of the Avenue de Paris were built
the Notre-Dame neighborhood and the Saint-Louis neighborhood, with new
large churches, markets, aristocratic mansions, buildings all built
in very homogeneous style according to the models established by the
Surintendant des Bâtiments du Roi. Versailles was a vast construction
site for many years. Little by little came to Versailles all those who
needed or desired to live close to the political power. At the death
of the Sun King in 1715, the village of Versailles had turned into a
city of approximately 30,000 inhabitants. FRENCH
REVOLUTION From
then on, Versailles lost a good deal of its inhabitants. From 60,000,
the population declined to 26,974 inhabitants in 1806.[2] The castle,
stripped of its furniture and ornaments during the Revolution, was left
abandoned, with only Napoleon briefly staying one night there and then
leaving the castle for good. King Louis-Philippe saved the castle from
total ruin by transforming it into a National Museum dedicated to "all
the glories of France" in 1837. Versailles had become a sort of
Sleeping Beauty. It was a place of pilgrimage for those nostalgic of
the old monarchy. Restoration
of the monarchy was even almost realized in 1873 with Henri, comte de
Chambord. Versailles was again the political center of France, full
of buzz and rumors, with its population briefly peaking at 61,686 in
1872,[2] matching the record level of population reached on the eve
of the French Revolution 83 years earlier. Eventually, however, as the
left-wing republicans won elections after elections, the parties supporting
a restoration of the monarchy were defeated and the new majority decided
to relocate the government to Paris in November 1879, with Versailles
experiencing a new population setback (48,324 inhabitants at the 1881
census).[2] After that, Versailles was never again used as the capital
city of France, but the presence of the French Parliament there in the
1870s left a vast hall built in one aisle of the palace which is still
used by the French Parliament when it meets in Congress to amend the
French Constitution. The centre of the town has kept its very bourgeois atmosphere, while more middle-class neighborhoods have developed around the train stations and in the outskirts of the city. Versailles is a chic suburb of Paris well linked with the center of Paris by several train lines. However, the city is extremely compartmented, divided by large avenues inherited from the monarchy which create the impression of several small cities ignoring each other. Versailles was never an industrial city, even though there are a few chemical and food processing plants. Essentially, Versailles is a place of services, such as public administration, tourism, business congresses, and festivals. Versailles is also an important military center, with several units and training schools headquartered at the Satory camp, where a military exhibition is organized annually. From 1951 until France's withdrawal from NATO unified command in 1966, nearby Rocquencourt was the site for SHAPE, and the famous 2nd Armored Division was headquartered there until 1999. CULTURE
The Palace of Versailles, or simply Versailles, is a royal château in Versailles, France. In French, it is known as the Château de Versailles. When the château was built, Versailles was a country village; today, however, it is a suburb of Paris. From 1682, when King Louis XIV moved from Paris, until the royal family was forced to return to the capital in 1789, the Court of Versailles was the centre of power in Ancien Régime France. Versailles is therefore famous not only as a building, but as a symbol of the system of absolute monarchy which Louis XIV espoused. Origins
and the first château: Louis XIII In
1575, Albert de Gondi, a Florentine, purchased the seigneury of Versailles.
Gondi had arrived in France with Catherine de Medici and his family
became influential in the French Parliament. In the early decades of
the 17th century, Gondi invited Louis XIII on several hunting trips
in the forests of Versailles. Following this initial introduction to
the area, Louis XIII ordered the construction of a hunting chateau in
1624. Designed by Philibert Le Roy, the structure was constructed of
stone and red brick with a slate roof. Eight years later, in 1632, Louis
obtained the seigneury of Versailles from the Gondi family and began
to make enlargements to the château. By moving the royal court and the seat of the French government, Louis XIV hoped to gain greater control of the government from the nobility, and to distance himself from the population of Paris. All the power of France emanated from this centre: there were government offices here, as well as the homes of thousands of courtiers, their retinues, and all the attendant functionaries of court. 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 centralize the French government in an absolute monarchy. The meticulous and strict court etiquette that Louis XIV established, which overwhelmed his heirs with its petty boredoms, was epitomized in the elaborate procedures accompanying 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, "etiquette" was quickly imitated in other European courts. Evolution
of Versailles The
idea of Versailles was originally started when Louis XIV wanted to ensure
that all of his advisors and the rulers of each region would be kept
close to him. He feared that they would rise up against and start a
revolt, which eventually happened anyway. He thought that if he kept
all of his potential over-throwers near him, that they would be powerless
and would not be able to attack because they would have to attack themselves
to attack him. 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 XIV, after confiscation of Fouquet’s
estate, employed the talents of architect Louis Le Vau, landscape architect
André Le Nôtre, and painter/decorator Charles Le Brun 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. 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, the duc and duchesse d’Orléans occupied apartments on the ground floor of the southern part of the château neuf. The upper story of the château neuf was reserved for private rooms for the king to the north and rooms for the king’s children above the queen’s apartment to the south. 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. In his monograph “Il n’y plus des Pyrenées: the Iconography of the first Versailles of Louis XIV,” Kevin Olin Johnson posited the hypothesis that the unprecedented similarity to the king and queen’s apartments represented Louis XIV’s wish to establish his wife as queen of Spain. In doing so, a dual monarchy of sorts would have been created. Louis XIV’s rationale for the joining of the two kingdoms was seen largely as recompense for Philip IV's failure to pay his daughter Marie-Thérèse’s dowry, which was among the terms of capitulation to which Spain agreed with the promulgation of the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659, ending the war between Spain and France that had been waged since 1635). Louis XIV regarded his father-in-law’s act as a breach of the treaty and consequently engaged in the War of Devolution. Both
the grand appartement du roi and the grand appartement de la reine formed
a suite of seven enfilade rooms. Each room is dedicated to one of the
then-known celestial bodies and is personified by the appropriate Greco-Roman
deity. The decoration of the rooms, which was conducted under the direction
of the Charles Le Brun, 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.). 4th
building campaign Features
of the Palace of Versailles
As a result of Louis LeVau’s envelope of Louis XIII’s château, the king and queen had new apartments in the new addition, known at the time as the château neuf. The State Apartments – Grands Appartements, which are known respectively as the grand appartement du roi and the grand appartement de la reine, occupied the main or principal floor of the château neuf. LeVau’s design for the state apartments closely followed Italian models of the day, as evidenced by the placement of the apartments on the next floor up from the ground level — the piano nobile — a convention the architect borrowed from 16th and 17th century Italian palace design. Grand
Appartement du roi Salon
de Diane (Diana, Roman goddess of the hunt; associated with the Moon) The rooms were decorated by Charles LeBrun and demonstrated Italian influences (LeBrun met and studied with the famed Tuscan artist Pietro da Cortona, whose decorative style of the Pitti Palace in Florence LeBrun adapted for use at Versailles). The quadratura style of the ceilings evoke Cortona’s Sale dei Planeti at the Pitti, but LeBrun’s decorative schema is more complex. In his 1674 publication about the grand appartement du roi, André Félibien described the scenes depicted in the coves of the ceilings of the rooms as allegories depicting the “heroic actions of the king.”[7] Accordingly, one finds scenes of the exploits of Augustus, Alexander the Great, and Cyrus alluding to the deeds of Louis XIV. For example, in the salon d’Apollon, the cove painting “Augustus building the port of Misenum”[8] alludes to the construction of the port at La Rochelle; or, depicted in the south cove of the salon de Mercure is “Ptolemy II Philadelphus in his Library”, which alludes to Ptolemy’s construction of the Great Library of Alexandria and which accordingly serves as an allegory to Louis XIV’s expansion of the Bibliothèque du roi.[9][10] Complementing the rooms’ decors were pieces of massive silver furniture. Regrettably, owing to the War of the League of Augsburg, in 1689 Louis XIV ordered all of this silver furniture to be sent to the mint, to be melted down to help defray the cost of the war.
LeVau’s original plan for the grand appartement du roi was short-lived. With the inauguration of the 2nd building campaign, which suppressed the terrace linking the king and queen’s apartments and the salons of Jupiter, Saturn and Venus for the construction of the Hall of Mirrors, the configuration of the grand appartement du roi was altered. The decor of the salon de Jupiter was removed and reused in the decoration of the salle des gardes de la reine; and elements of the decoration of the first salon de Vénus, which opened onto the terrace, were reused in the salon de Vénus that we see today.[11] From 1678 to the end of Louis XIV’s reign, the grand appartement du roi served as the venue for the king’s thrice-weekly evening receptions, known as les soirées de l’appartement. For these parties, the rooms assumed specific functions: Salon
de Vénus: buffet tables were arranged to display food and drink
for the king’s guests. Grand
Appartement de la reine When Louis Le Vau’s envelope of the château vieux was completed, the grand appartement de la reine came to include a suite of seven enfilade rooms with an arrangement that mirrored almost exactly the grand appartement du roi. The configuration was: Chapel
— which was pendant with the salon de Diane in the grand appartement
du roi With the construction of the Hall of Mirrors, which began in 1678, the configuration of the grand appartement de la reine changed. The chapel was transformed into the salle des gardes de la reine and it was in this room that the decorations from the salon de Jupiter were reused. The salle des gardes de la reine communicates with a loggia that issues from the escalier de la reine, which formed a parallel pendant (albeit a smaller, though similarly-decorated example) with the escalier des ambassadeurs in the grand appartement du roi. The loggia also provides access to the appartement du roi, the suite of rooms in which Louis XIV lived. Toward the end of Louis XIV’s reign, the escalier de la reine became the principal entrance to the château, with the escalier des ambassadeurs used on rare state occasions. After the destruction of the escalier des ambassadeurs in 1752, the escalier de la reine became the main entrance to the château. From 1682, the grand appartement de la reine included: Salle
des gardes de la reine To commemorate the birth of his only son and heir, Louis-Ferdinand, in 1729, Louis XV ordered a complete redecoration of the room. Elements of the chamber de la reine as it had been used by Marie-Thérèse and Marie-Adélaïde de Savoie were removed and a new, more modern decor was installed. During her life at Versailles, Marie Leszczynska (1703-1768) lived in the grand apartment de la reine, to which she annexed the salon de la paix to serve as a music room. In 1770, when the Austrian archduchess Marie-Antoinette married the dauphin, later Louis XVI, she took up residence in these rooms. Upon Louis XVI’s ascension to the throne in 1774, Marie-Antoinette ordered major redecoration of the grand appartement de la reine. At this time, the queen’s apartment achieved the arrangement that we see today. Salle
des gardes de la reine — this room remained virtually unchanged
by Marie-Antoinette SOURCES
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