CHATEAU DE VERSAILLES

PALACE OF VERSAILLES

PALACE OF VERSAIILES

A visit to Paris is incomplete without a visit to the Palace of Versailles. Yes indeed, you do not read the "lles" in the name. It is pronounced as "Versaii". It started off as the hunting lodge of  Louis XIII in 1631. His son Louis XIV transformed it into a palace. His successors further transformed it into the most beautiful and luxurious palace of all times. This palace was the venue for the “Versailles Treaty” after the First World War. It was also the venue for the wedding of the daughter of Laxmi Mittal-the richest man in UK, an Indian by birth. I personally think that this Palace was also one of the reasons for the French Revolution. 

I need to get enough Adjectives to describe the beauty and grandeur of this Chateau. It is large, beautiful, grand and gilded with gold.  The palace dimensions are gargantuan and the gardens are exquisite. They spread out over acres. In spite of its huge size, the gardens are meticulously maintained and are almost perfect in its beauty. The Schonbrunn palace of Vienna was largely based on the Versailles palace. The Holkar Palace of Indore, India, was also designed on the Versailles palace.

The gold paint used on the walls was real gold. The splendor of the palace has to be seen to understand what grandeur really means.

The palace has been maintained as it was, during the reign of the Bourbons. Furniture, chandeliers, drapes are all there. Originally the furniture was mostly made of silver, but silver was melted to meet war expenditure by the Bourbons themselves, and wood came in its place.The rooms are large, airy and most of the windows open to the beautiful view of the fabulous gardens. 

GARDEN

The gardens are planned and very well laid out. One could look out at a riot of colours, where the flowers have been planted meticulously and are colour co coordinated. There is a lake, beautiful statues, fountains, an orangerie and, huge trees lining the garden, again very planned and beautifully laid out. There is a separate garden which belonged to Marie Antoinette.

HALL OF MIRRORS

There is a Hall of mirrors in the palace. There are seventeen mirror clad arches which reflect the seventeen windows overlooking the magnificent gardens. Each arch contains twenty one mirrors. Mirrors were very expensive in the seventeenth century and Venice held monopoly for manufacturing mirrors. Several workers from Venice were brought to France, by Jean Baptiste Colbert who was the French minister of finance, so that the mirrors could be made locally in the Gobelins factory, to maintain the integrity of "philosophy of mercantilism". This hall has been the venue for signing of many treaties, including the famous Versailles Treaty  signed after World War I.

In the times of the Bourbons, Royalty was considered divine. They were called The Sun King. Reminds me of the Suryavanshi(Descendants of the Sun God) Rajas that we had in India! The French Kings had to actually live infront of the eyes of the public. The King had to sleep in view of courtiers. He also had to wake up in the presence of his chosen courtiers. In the Royal bed chamber there was place for all those courtiers to stand and await the waking up of the King. The Queen had to deliver her babies in full view of courtiers. I wonder what life really must have been for them!

GARDEN

Louis XIII, up to Louis XVI all lived here. The Dauphin or the Crown Prince also lived in these palaces. Louis XV, lived so long that his own sons died before him and his grandson became the next King.

The Kings and Queens living away from Paris were totally lost to the needs of the country and the public. They lived in splendour and spent their time in pursuit of fashion, soirees, and balls. The powdered wigs, jeweled shoes, high heeled shoes, huge bouffant, coiffures, heavily and richly embroidered gowns were all the contribution of these rulers of France.

BED CHAMBER

There is therefore no wonder that the French Revolution happened. When oppression gets beyond endurance, then a revolution is bound to happen. When most of the French population was suffering from lack of food and other essentials of life, the Rulers were happily enjoying their life without a care for their people.

It is said that when Marie Antoinette, the wife of Louis XVI, who was the daughter of  Marie Theresa, the Empress of Austria, was told that the people of France did not have bread to eat, her reply was, “then let them eat cake”. I don’t know how true this episode is, but seeing the kind of life the King and Queens of France lived, it does not seem improbable.

France is well known for its sweet sounding language and also the romantic nature of its men. It was almost traditional for men of nobility to have a mistress. One has heard of Madame de Pompadour, as well as Madame du Barry,  who were both mistresses of Louis XV. Both these ladies were very powerful people.

Travelling to Versailles  for me was another great adventure. We went upto the station to catch a train. We had to enter the station after swiping our tickets. Strangely, there was no passage for a wheelchair to go through. The station was unmanned, and we were totally foxed about how to go through. After many permutations and combinations, we had to lift the wheelchair over the quite high gates, where one of us was standing on the other side to grip it. It was quite an ordeal, and had we not had 2 people besides the wheel chair occupant, it would have been impossible to go through. The train journey itself was good. The train was a double decker and there were two people who entertained us with music, of course for a consideration.
Versailles - grand, magnificent, beautiful, Versailles, made me remember the saying "Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown"! All the riches, glamour and magnificence of the palace could not ensure fairy tale endings for the Bourbons! How happily the people of Paris must have watched the chopping off of the head of their King Louis XVI! How the beautiful, fashionable, royal Queen Marie Antoinette must have felt, when she had to make her escape from Versailles. She was accused of a number of charges and was found guilty. How must she have felt when  her hair was chopped off, and she was taken in an ordinary open cart to her place of guillotine, in full public view. How pitiful it must have been.

THE DOOR OF ESCAPE OF MARIE ANTOINETTE

The magnificent, rich, guilded with gold palace of Versailles, left me with thoughts, about the vagaries of time. It also brought to my mind the immortal words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
"Lives of great men all remind us,
We can make our lives sublime,and, 
Departing leave behind us,
Footprints on the sands of time."