Bonne Soirée

“Paris is a city where time is best spent doing nothing.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

In Paris time is indeed best spent doing nothing, but doing nothing rarely finds space on the tourist’s agenda.

Which is why, after going to bed late on Thursday night (Friday morning really), we found ourselves on the early RER-C train from Paris to Versailles.

Midway on our 40-minute journey to Versailles.

Louis XIV greets us in front of the Palace of Versailles.

The château was originally built as a hunting lodge for Louis XIII in the 17th century.
It was later expanded and transformed into a grand palace by Louis XIV, the self-proclaimed “Le roi soleil” (the Sun King), in the late 17th century.
The palace became the political and administrative center of France, with the royal court moving to Versailles in 1682.

As Louis XIV fancied himself the Sun King, gold features heavily throughout the Palace.

Upon seeing Versailles two things become immediately clear—the palace defies description and you understand why the French Revolution occurred.
It is absolutely massive. I can’t even compare it to the largest place we visited in England—Blenheim Palace perhaps? Everything simply pales under the scale and grander of Versailles.

The **Royal Chapel** was the fifth and final chapel built in the Palace.

The **Hercules Room** was the last room to be built by Louis XIV at the end of his reign. **The Apotheosis of Hercules** by Francois Lemoyne provides the most stunning 3D visual effect—combining the vault of the ceiling, a perimeter of statues, and the largest ceiling painted on canvas in Europe.
Louis XIV be damned, but the masons, painters, sculptures, and other artists he hired were supremely talented.

Corner after corner, there is simply no end to the finery, detail, and artistry.

And then we turned the corner—and we both audibly gasped.

**Hall of Mirrors**—The grandiose ensemble of the hall and its adjoining salons was intended to illustrate the power of the absolutist monarch Louis XIV.

If it was the king’s intention to leave you speechless, then mission accomplished!

If the Hall wasn’t enough, then you arrive in Marie Antoinette’s bedroom.

It’s hard to imagine such a precipitous fall from grace—from having this bed canopy over your head to the guillotine.

Marie Antoinette was reportedly a devoted mother to her four children—Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte, Louis-Joseph, Louis-Charles, and Sophie—who provided emotional solace for the troubled French queen.
The French Revolution would tear France—and Marie’s family—apart, leading to the deaths of Louis, Marie, and one of their sons. In the end, their sole surviving daughter was left to cope with the trauma and tragedy of the family’s fate.

You’ll find no references to the Revolution inside the Palace. Into the vacuum left by Louis XVI’s execution rose the self-possessed **Napoleon Bonaparte**, riding upon the good fortune of his “lucky star.”
In the center of the **Coronation Room** (where he crowned himself and his wife!) stands the Column from the German Campaign, also called the “Austerlitz Column,” which Napoleon commissioned to commemorate his first imperial victories.

The French certainly never suffered from an inferiority complex.

The **Gallery of Great Battles** is the most important of the historic Galleries created by Louis-Philippe in the Palace of Versailles.
It covers almost the entire first floor of the South Wing of the Palace and depicts nearly 15 centuries of French military successes, from Clovis to Napoleon, through 30 or so paintings.

The Gallery includes this painting of Joan of Arc, a patron saint of France.

It’s an uncomfortable reality that so many of the great places we want to visit in this world were made great through the tremendous suffering of the multitudes.

From Versalles, to the Pyramids of Giza, to the Great Wall of China—because of one man’s unquenchable ego, we have these monuments.

For so many in France, Louis XIV was the source of their abject misery. Yet without him, few of the treasures created inside Versailles would have come into existence. They exist because of Louis XIV. Yet their existence was born of great cost, in every sense of the word.

Many English nobles used generational wealth to complete “Grand Tours” where they collected art from around the world—on the one hand a contemptuous waste of money, and, on the other hand, where would we be today had wealthy people not preserved so many priceless antiquities inside their homes.

I have no answers. Visiting such places only seems to raise more questions, leaving one with uncomfortable realities that are not easily catalogued.

Gardens of Versailles

After two hours of touring the house, you still haven’t seen the Gardens of Versailles.

Even if you started in the morning and had all day, it’s unlikely you could see all that’s on offer in the many gardens, which extend across 2,000 acres of land behind the Palace.