8 things you didn’t know about the Palace of Versailles

Attracting over 8 million visitors a year, the Palace of Versailles is one of France’s most popular tourist destinations. With the reopening of the Queen’s grand apartment and new presentations of Louis XIVs rooms, the Palace has exciting things in store for this year’s visitors. Below are 8 things to discover about the Palace and its history before planning your visit.

It was in 1607 when Louis XIII, the young son of Henri IV, chose the grounds of Versailles for his first hunting expedition. By the end of 1623, 13 years in to his reign, he decided to set up a small hunting lodge consisting of two modest castles. It was there that the Day of the Dupes occurred, an attempt to exile the Cardinal Richelieu, Marie de Medici, Louis XIIIs mother, ended up in exile herself at the commands of her own son. It was not until 1661 that Louis XIV began the first of a series of construction efforts on the Palace, resulting in all its grandeur and the subsequent decision that it would become the main residence for France’s government.

As early as 1661, Louis XIV entrusted Andre le Notre with the design and development of the famous Versailles gardens, which would later be known as a model of exceptional landscaping across the world. With the help of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, a member of the King’s cabinet, and later the architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart, tasked with the Orangery, Le Notre got to work. He was entrusted to design the layout of the gardens, to draw the numerous statues and fountains, and with the huge burden of leveling, planting, and routing of trees from several provinces in France. The project took 40 years in all to complete, and the gardens require replanting every hundred years or so in order to maintain their integrity and beauty. During a storm in December of 1999, some 10,000 to 20,000 trees were split or uprooted, including 80% of the rarest species, and two Virginia tulip trees planted by Marie-Antoinette herself.

It was during the Age of Enlightenment, and under the reign of Louis XVI, that the Montgolfier brothers succeeded in their first flight. On September 19, 1783, under the watchful eyes of the King and his family, a hot air balloon measuring 18 meters in height made its first flight over the courtyards of Versailles. With a sheep, a rooster, and a duck as passengers, the royally decorated balloon reached 600 meters in the sky. The experiment was revisited later when Pilatre de Rozier became the first person in history to have made an unmanned flight.

Contrary to what’s been reported, and often misrepresented in fictional accounts, Versailles was not ransacked during the revolution. After the royal family departed for the Tuilleries Palace on October 6, 1789, the Palace’s maintenance crew took the King’s absence as an opportunity for repairs. The repairs included the amelioration of the paintings and ceilings in the hall of mirrors. After the inauguration of the Central Museum of Arts in Paris in August of 1793, most of the Palace’s works of art were transferred to the Louvre. That same year, a law was enacted to get rid of the furniture that was left at Versailles, the remaining items were thus sold to Parisian merchants and wealthy citizens.

During the July Monarchy, Louis-Philippe, dubbed the “citizen king”, made the decision to transform Versailles in to a historical museum dedicated to “all the glories of France”. The motivations behind his decision were his hopes of uniting the people of France around their shared heritage. The museum was inaugurated on June 10, 1837 in the presence of Alexandre Dumas, Eugene Delacroix, and Victor Hugo, who wrote: “What Louis-Philippe has done in Versailles is a good thing. To have accomplished this project is to have been a great King and an impartial philosopher, it is to have made a national monument out of a monarchical monument, it is to have put an immense idea in an immense edifice, it is to have installed the present in the past, 1789 side by side with 1688, the emperor visiting the king, Napoleon visiting Louis XIV; in fewer words, it is to have created a magnificent book of French history using Versailles as its binding.”

In 1914, the military occupied the Place d’Armes and the foremost court of the Palace. Military hospitals were quickly established as the wounded returned from battle. The most significant Versailles related event that occurred during this period was on June 28th 1919, when the Treaty of Versailles was signed in the Hall of Mirrors. The treaty effectively put an end to the Great War while affirming Germany’s defeat. Signed with the approval of Georges Clemenceau, Woodrow Wilson, David Lloyd George, and Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, the treaty effectively stripped Germany of its control over Alsace, Lorraine, and over its colonies, responsible for agricultural production. It was this act of peace, considered by Germany to be a diktat, which eventually lead to the Second World War.

Since 1904, the Palace has served as a setting for nearly 200 films. Among the first made, are several documentary films and historical period dramas made by Pathe. Since then, the likes of many great filmmakers have brought their creativity to Versailles: Alain Resnais, Jacques Demy, Jean Yanne, Milos Forman, Sofia Coppola, and Woody Allen just to name a few. The most emblematic of all the films shot there remains “Si Versailles m’était conté”, shot in 1953 by Sacha Guitry, this filmed helped to re-establish the notoriety of the Palace, which had experienced a decline in popularity after half a century of wars.

Despite it being a turning point for American fashion designers, the Battle of Versailles Fashion Show is an episode in the history of fashion rarely discussed. In the early 1970’s, then chief curator of the Palace of Versailles, Gerald Van der Kemp, was seeking sponsors to finance the Palace’s restoration. Eleanor Lambert, the famous American press agent known for having launched the first New York Fashion Week, stepped in and proposed that Van der Kemp organize a fashion show/contest at the Palace. On November 28th 1973, the Battle of Versailles pitted the greatest of French couturiers at the time against the best of the American fashion scene. On the French side there was: Yves Saint Laurent, Christian Dior, Hubert de Givenchy, Emmanuel Ungaro and Pierre Cardin. On the opposing American side there was: Stephen Burrows, Bill Blass, Oscar de la Renta, Halston, and Anne Klein, all still relatively unknown to the international fashion world. Josephine Baker opened the show, Liza Minnelli presided over the ceremonies, and Pat Cleveland dominated the runway, and with that American fashion stepped out on to the international runway.