On this date in 1789 a crowd of angry women, protesting about the price of bread, gathered in the marketplaces of Paris. They were joined by revolutionaries and in due course thousands of people marched on the Palace of Versailles. This was one of the earliest and most significant events of the French Revolution. And a good excuse to present 10 facts about the Palace of Versailles.
The Palace of Versailles is located in the Yvelines département, Île-de-France région, northern France, 10 miles (16 km) west-southwest of Paris. It attracts over 8 million visitors a year. Since 1979 the palace has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
It started life as a hunting lodge for Louis XIII and his family. He enjoyed hunting and wanted a place to stay in the country rather than have to travel home in the dark. His son Louis XIV, “the Sun King” installed the Court and government there in 1682 and set about transforming the place in to the palace it is today. Every detail of its construction was intended to glorify the king. The entire property is laid out from East to West, following the daily path of the Sun.
The gardens were designed by André Le Nôtre and took 40 years to create. The gardens covered more than 30,000 acres, with 400 sculptures and 1,400 fountains. There were so many exotic plants and Flowers that the combined smells were said to make people in the nearby town feel sick. That didn’t stop members of the public from coming to visit the gardens, which were open to the public. There was a strict dress code, although if you didn’t own the right kind of clothing you could rent an outfit for the duration of your visit.
It was the location of the first Toilet in France. It was installed for Marie Antoinette and was known as the “lieu anglaise” or “place of the English”. This may well be where we get the English slang word “loo” from. However, nobody else had an en suite. Everyone else had a chamber pot. Made from Silver, of course. These were emptied out of the windows. It was said people carried leather Umbrellas in the courtyards to avoid being hit by something nasty.
The fountains caused problems. Versailles was not located near a river so sourcing the Water for them wasn’t easy. Artificial ponds had to be created, but even they didn’t provide enough water to keep the fountains going 24/7. Hence the gardeners devised a secret whistling code in order to warn each other when the king was walking in the gardens, so that as he approached, the fountains could be turned on and off again when he’d passed by, allowing him to think it was all working perfectly. Eventually, to have enough water for everything to work as planned, they had to pump water from Seine. Some of the fountains still use the same hydraulics network today.
Inside, the palace has 2153 Windows, 1200 fireplaces, 700 rooms (although sources differ and some say over 2,000 rooms) and 67 staircases. Everything used to construct and decorate the Palace was created in France.
Which brings us to the Hall of Mirrors. This room contains 357 mirrors and is flanked on opposite ends by the Salon of Peace and the Salon of War. Impressive as it is, it was designed merely as a passageway to get from one room to another and wasn’t a venue for ceremonies. The mirrors, however, posed a problem for the designers in their quest to make sure everything in the palace was made in France. This was because at the time, Venice was the only place making mirrors. So, they lured some of the mirror makers to France. Venice wasn’t happy about this and ordered all the mirror makers who’d gone to France executed for giving away the secrets of mirror making. The treaty that ended World War I, the Treaty of Versailles, was signed in the Hall of Mirrors.
The palace was so huge that there was quite some distance between the kitchen and the king’s dining room. Hence the meals would have left the kitchen piping hot but would have been cold by the time they reached the king. The sheer amount of marble used in the palace didn’t help, making it so cold in winter that it has been said that in March 1695, Wine froze in glasses on the King’s table.
Marie Antoinette had a rustic village built in the grounds which it was said was for her to go and play at being poor with her ladies, doing their own cleaning and cooking for themselves. Officially, though, it was a working farm and may equally have been a place for royal children to learn about farming.
In 1789, the French Revolution forced the royal family to return to Paris. The golden gate of the palace was destroyed by revolutionaries (there is a replica there now, installed in 2008) and many of the artworks were moved to The Louvre. The palace itself wasn’t ransacked however. Rather the king’s servants saw it as a chance to do repairs. It was never again a royal residence. It became the Museum of the History of France in 1837 by order of King Louis-Philippe.
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The Gingerbread Man
A short story collection including aliens, princes and princesses, dragons, superhero origin stories and of course, a gingerbread man.
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