#The Southern Parterre
is part of three square miles of gardens at Versailles. Kings of France and
Navarre (1643-1715).
A HALF-HOUR RIDE WEST
from the centre of Paris on the commuter train, the town and suburb of Versailles has grown up around a
palace that stand as perhaps the most splendid example of control-freakery the
world has ever seen. In 1661, the young Louis XIV embarked on a massive
expansion of his father’s old hunting lodge, to glorify his rule and secure his
crown against two troublesome quarters-Parisians, and ambitious nobles who
might build private power bases in the provinces.
French kings had long been in the habit of roaming between
various country chateaux and residences in the capital that were uncomfortably
exposed to unruly Parisian crowds. In 1651, one mob had even barged into the
12-year-old King’s bedchamber. From 1682, Louis moved permanently to
Versailles, and required most of his court to live where he could keep an eye
on them, in his ever-growing palace.
On entering the state apartments, once the immediate impact
of the coloured marble and gilt has worn off, a running theme emerges – a
sunburst with a face at the centre, repeated in the design. In Louis XIV’s
propaganda, he was the Sun King, and solar metaphors were given free rein. Versailles’ original building plan
followed a kind of yin and yang, with the king’s apartments and the Salon of
War in one wing, and the queen’s rooms and the Salon of Peace in the other. But
ultimately Louis moved hid bedchamber to the very centre of the palace, facing
the rising sun.
Every morning at eight, he would be woken in his canopied
bed, watched over by a gilded figure representing France herself. Over the next
two hours, up to a hundred courtiers would crowd into his room to join in the
ritual of the ‘lever’ (‘rising’), where handing a shirt or a glove to the king as he dressed was a
social and political honour calculated, like all Versailles etiquette, down to the
last degree.
Yet despite the formality of the court, security could be
surprisingly relaxed. Almost anyone was allowed into the palace provided they
met a few minimum standards of attire, and even the gentlemen could rent the
required dress sword at the entrance if they had none of their own. ‘There are
nations where majesty of kings consists, in large part, in never letting
themselves be seen,’ Louis XIV once said. ‘But that is not the genius of our
French nation.’ The curious throng from all over the world who process through
the Hall of Mirrors six days a week are unwittingly re-enacting a drama
scripted by the Sun King.
In its display and ritual, Versailles was a suit made to fit
its creator. But Louis XIV and Louis XVI who followed him were more private
characters, as was the wife of the last, Marie Antoinette of Austria. Even a Habsburg
princess like her found the etiquette at Versailles oppressive, and she escaped
when she could to her own miniature palace-the Petit Trianon, at the other end
of the gardens. Although she never said ‘Let them eat cake’, the mock hamlet
she had built in the grounds was a source of much ridicule at the time.
Versailles’
reign ended on 6 October 1789, when an angry crowd overwhelmed the palace
guard, forcing the royal family to return Paris, and finally sending them to
the guillotine in 1793. The first and last piece of pomp in Versailles is the equestrian statue
of Louis XIV at the entrance. Here the king sits, with his back turned on the
chateau he willed into being and which his successors could never fully make
their own, and his arm pointed down the grand avenue that leads back to Paris.
Book on e-ticket online and come Wednesday to Friday to
avoid the biggest crowds (chateauversailles.fr).
