Louis XIII In the early seventeenth century, Gondi 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. Designed by
Philibert Le Roy, the structure, a small château, was constructed of stone and red brick, with a based roof. Eight years later, Louis obtained the
seigneury of Versailles from the Gondi family and began to make enlargements to the château. A vignette of Versailles from the 1652 Paris map of shows a traditional design: an entrance court with a
corps de logis on the far western end, flanked by secondary wings on the north and south sides, and closed off by an entrance screen. Adjacent exterior towers were located at the four corners, with the entire structure surrounded by a moat. This was preceded by two service wings, creating a forecourt with a grilled entrance marked by two round towers. The vignette also shows a garden on the western side of the château with a fountain on the central axis and rectangular planted
parterres to either side.
Louis XIV had played and hunted at the site as a boy. With a few modifications, this structure would become the core of the new palace.
Louis XIV in Versailles
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. 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 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 centralise the French government in an absolute monarchy. 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. According to historian
Philip Mansel, the king turned the palace into: :an irresistible combination of marriage market, employment agency and entertainment capital of aristocratic Europe, boasting the best theater, opera, music, gambling, sex and (most important) hunting. The expansion of the château became synonymous with the absolutism of Louis XIV. 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 and believed that if he kept all of his potential threats near him, they would be powerless. After the disgrace of
Nicolas Fouquet in 1661 – Louis claimed the
Superintendent of Finances 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 estate, 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.
First building campaign (
Versailles Museum) The first building campaign (1664–1668) commenced with
The Pleasures of the Enchanted Island 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
Maria Theresa of Spain, Louis XIV's wife – but in reality honored the king's mistress,
Louise de La Vallière. The celebration of
The Pleasures of the Enchanted Island is often regarded as a prelude to the
War of Devolution, which Louis waged against
Spain. The first building campaign (1664–1668) involved alterations in the château and gardens to accommodate the 600 guests invited to the party.
Second building campaign in blue and the grand appartement de la reine'' in yellow. The old château is shown in gray. The terrace overlooked the central
parterre of the
gardens of Versailles. 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 some of the appearance that it has today. The most important modification of the château was Le Vau's envelope of Louis XIII's hunting lodge. The
enveloppe – often referred to as the
château neuf to distinguish it from the older structure of Louis XIII – enclosed the hunting lodge on the north, west, and south. 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. Le Vau's design imagined a large extension of the
enveloppe westwards, enabling huge galleries and staircases to be built. In June 1669 Louis XIV decided to keep his father's hunting lodge, so the architectural plans for the
enveloppe had to be reconfigured and the scale of the new rooms reduced. The new structure provided new lodgings for the King and members of his family. The main floor – the
piano nobile – of the
château neuf was given over entirely to two apartments: one for the King, and one for the Queen. The
grand appartement du roi occupied the northern part of the château neuf and
grand appartement de la reine occupied the southern part. The western part of the
enveloppe was given over almost entirely to a terrace, which was later enclosed with the construction of the
Hall of Mirrors (
Galerie des Glaces). 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 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. It has been suggested that this parallel configuration was intentional as Louis XIV had intended to establish Maria Theresa as queen of Spain, and thus thereby establish a
dual monarchy. 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 Maria Theresa's
dowry, which was among the terms to which Spain agreed with the promulgation of the
Treaty of the Pyrenees, which ended the
war between France and Spain that began in 1635 during the
Thirty Years' War. 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 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.).
Third building campaign With the signing of the
Treaty of Nijmegen in 1678, which ended the
Franco-Dutch War, the third building campaign at Versailles began (1678–1684). The court had grown during the 1670s as Louis XIV re-shaped his relationship with the high aristocracy. To enjoy his favor it became indispensable to attend Louis wherever he went, placing a strain on the existing accommodation for courtiers at Versailles. The royal family had also grown sizeably, augmented by the legitimization of Louis' five children by his mistress
Madame de Montespan between 1673 and 1681. As newly forged
Princes of the Blood all of these children required suitable apartments at Versailles. Under the direction of the chief architect,
Jules Hardouin-Mansart, the Palace of Versailles acquired much of the look that it has today during the 1680s. Le Brun was 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. As symbol of France's new prominence as a European
super-power, Louis XIV officially installed his court at Versailles in May 1682. In 1684 construction commenced on the North Wing, which would house members of the high aristocracy; between the two new wings 175 new lodgings were created. 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. Major outbuildings of considerable grandeur in themselves were also built during the third phase, including the
Grand Commun, the
Orangerie, the
Grand Trianon, and the pair of stables known as the
Petite and
Grand Ecurie. 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. This cost roughly 1.1 million
livres between 1684 and 1685, with construction completed in 1686. Mansart's imposing
Grand Commun was built on the site of the old village church of Versailles, St. Julien, east of the new South Wing of the palace, between 1682 and 1684. An enormous rectangle arranged around a central courtyard, the
Grand Commun was a dormitory for members of the King's household, intended to provide 103 new lodgings. The largest and most imposing outbuildings were the two stables, the
Grand and the
Petit Ecurie, constructed between 1679 and 1682. The Royal Stables were given pride of place opposite the ''Cour d'Armes
in front of the main palace, on either side of the Avenue de Paris'', the main approach to Versailles from Paris. 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. The "Grand" Stable housed the King's hunting horses and hounds, while the "Petit" Stable contained the King's carriages and other transport. The third phase saw the re-configuration of major parts of the Grand Apartments of both the King and the Queen. Louis XIV ceased to inhabit the rooms of his Grand Apartment, the salons of which were instead used for purposes of state and ceremony. Between the new Hall of Mirrors to the west and the Staircase of the Ambassadors to the east, the Grand Apartment created one huge route for entertainment and palace
fêtes. The King's former bedchamber became a throne room known as the ''Salon d'Apollon
, while the neighboring Salon de Mercure
contained a state bed partitioned from the public area by a solid silver balustrade. The Grand Apartments were furnished sumptuously with objects from the Gobelins Manufactory, showcasing the very best in French decorative arts and craftmanship. The most extravagant ornaments were those made from solid silver at the Gobelins, to the cost of some 10 million livres''. There were 167 such objects on display between the Hall of Mirrors and the Grand Apartment in 1687, ranging from candelabras,
gueridons and statues, to urns, stools, and incense burners. 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. To create a suitably sumptuous approach, the rooms behind the south façade overlooking the
Cour de Marbre were modified to create three large antechambers (the
vestibule,
Salle des gardes du roi, and the
Première Antichambre) preceding the King's bedchamber, followed by the Grand Salon at the center of the west façade. Another antechamber just east of the new dining room was then converted into a replacement guard room. After the death of the Queen in 1683, one of the rooms from her Grand Apartment, between the south and west facades, was transformed into the
Deuxième Antichambre of the
Appartement du roi.
Fourth building campaign 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. The fourth building campaign (1699–1710) concentrated almost exclusively on construction of the
royal chapel designed by Hardouin-Mansart and finished by
Robert de Cotte and his team of decorative designers. In 1701 there were further modifications in the
appartement du roi, namely the construction of the ''Salon de l'Œil de Bœuf'' and the King's Bedchamber. This was achieved by eliminating the wall between the
Deuxième Antichambre and the old bedchamber of the King, creating one much larger antechamber in the process, the ''Chambre de l'Oeil de Boeuf
. The neighboring Grand Salon was then converted into the new bedchamber of the king, which now sat squarely at the center of the west façade over the Cour de Marbre''. With the completion of the chapel in 1710, virtually all construction at Versailles ceased; building would not be resumed at Versailles until some twenty one years later during the reign of
Louis XV.
Louis XV After the death of Louis XIV in 1715, the five-year-old King
Louis XV, the court, and the
Régence government of
Philippe II, Duke of Orléans returned to Paris. In May 1717, during his visit to France, the Russian Tsar
Peter the Great stayed at the
Grand Trianon. 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. During the reign of Louis XV, Versailles underwent transformation but not on the scale that had been seen during his predecessor's reign. When Louis XV and the court returned to Versailles in 1722, the first project was the completion of the
Salon d'Hercule, which had been begun during the last years of Louis XIV's reign but was never finished due to the King's death. Significant among Louis XV's contributions to Versailles were the
petit appartement du roi; the
appartements des Mesdames, the
appartement du dauphin, the
appartement de la dauphine on the ground floor; and the two private apartments of Louis XV –
petit appartement du roi au deuxième étage (later transformed into the
appartement de Madame du Barry) and the
petit appartement du roi au troisième étage – on the second and third floors of the palace. The crowning achievements of Louis XV's reign were the construction of the
Opera and the
Petit Trianon. Equally significant was the destruction of the
Escalier des Ambassadeurs (Ambassadors' Stair), the only fitting approach to the State Apartments, which Louis XV undertook to make way for apartments for his daughters. 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. By the 1750s this structure had seriously weakened, necessitating the removal of the skylight and the destruction of the staircase. The
gardens remained largely unchanged from the time of Louis XIV; the completion of the
Bassin de Neptune between 1738 and 1741 was the most important legacy Louis XV made to the gardens. Towards the end of his reign, Louis XV, under the advice of
Ange-Jacques Gabriel, began to remodel the courtyard façades of the palace. With the objective revetting the entrance of the palace with classical façades, Louis XV began a project that was continued during the reign of Louis XVI, but which did not see completion until the 20th century.
Louis XVI In 1774, shortly after his ascension,
Louis XVI ordered an extensive replanting of the
bosquets of the
gardens, since many of the century-old trees had died. Only a few changes to Le Nôtre's design were made: some bosquets were removed, others altered, including the Bains d'Apollon (north of the Parterre de Latone), which was redone after a design by
Hubert Robert in
anglo-chinois style (popular during the late 18th century), and the
Labyrinth (at the southern edge of the garden) was converted to the small Jardin de la Reine. The worsening finances of the French monarchy led to neglect in the maintenance of the palace.
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. in the
Louis XVI style. To compound the shortage of money, Louis XVI channeled significant financial resources into other properties, including the purchase and renovation of the
Chateau de Saint-Cloud in 1784, and an ongoing rebuilding of the
Château de Compiègne throughout the 1780s. 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". In 1780 Louis XVI completed the Gabriel Wing reconstruction begun by his grandfather, and he had plans to extend the rebuilding. In 1779, the
Royal Buildings Office invited architects to submit designs for the "Grand Project", the goal being to harmonize the new Neoclassical Gabriel wing with the antiquated Louis XIII style of the southern wing and the original hunting lodge façade on the Marble Court. Several stories for the
petit appartement du roi were added above those already constructed by Louis XV, reaching six stories high. Louis XVI was known to walk on the roof and enjoy the commanding views, sometimes sitting with a telescope to peer at the courtiers milling around in the forecourts beneath him. 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. They were demolished in the 19th century in order to restore the appearance of the façade as it existed under Louis XIV. ==French Revolution==