Inside the palace

Spawforth notes that the palace contained about 350 living units varying in size, from multi-room apartments to spaces about the size of an alcove. The size and location of the room a person got depended on their rank and standing with the king. While the crown prince (known as the dauphin) got a sprawling apartment on the ground floor, a servant may have nothing more than a space in an attic or a makeshift room behind a staircase. 

The bedroom of Louis XIV, built on the upper floor and located centrally along the east-west axis of the palace, was the most important room and was the location of two important ceremonies where the king would wake up (lever) and go to sleep (coucher) surrounded by his courtiers. The king also had a ceremony for putting on and taking off his hunting boots. “The room where the king slept became the nucleus of the residence and, therefore, of the kingdom,” Bajou writes.

The importance of the courtiers being at these ceremonies continued into the reigns of Louis XV and XVI. Spawforth notes that a courtier in 1784 wrote that “most of the people who come to the court are persuaded that, to make their way there, they must show themselves everywhere, be absent as little possible at the king’s lever, removal of the boots, and coucher, show themselves assiduously at the dinners of the royal family ... in short, must ceaselessly work at having themselves noticed.”

Complementing these court ceremonies was the beauty of the palace itself, which emphasized the achievements and power of the king. The king’s bedroom and apartment area were located close to the Hall of Mirrors. Spawforth writes that the hall has 30 tableaux that tell an “epic narrative” of what “Louis (XIV) as King of France aspired to be.”

Victory in battle features prominently in these narratives with one example showing Louis with his army crossing the Rhine River in 1672. “Hair streaming, dressed in Roman style and holding a thunderbolt like a projectile, Louis sits godlike on a silver chariot pushed by Hercules while riding roughshod over female personifications of nearby enemy towns.”

The design of the hall added to the effect. “Viewing was to be helped by the famous wall of mirrors, which diffuses the daylight, except above the windows, where the detail is shadowy.”

The Hall of Mirrors was flanked on its north side by the Salon of War, which has art depicting the king’s victory against a European coalition in a war that ran from 1688-1697, and on its south side by a Salon of Peace, which has art depicting the benefits of the forthcoming peace. 

The king had his throne in the “Apollo Salon” and worshiped in a royal chapel, which spanned two stories, which Bajou notes was built between 1699 and 1710. The power of the king once again figures prominently in the decoration of the chapel, “the iconography of the painted and sculptural decorations corresponds to a theological and political plan to demonstrate that the powers and duties of the monarch are given by divine right,” writes Bajou.

One interesting limit on the king’s power was with communion. Spawforth notes that both “Louis XIV and his successors were too pious to take communion during their adulteries.” Furthermore, when they committed adultery they had to cancel a ceremony they undertook in which they would touch people inflicted with scrofula and supposedly cure them. Spawforth said that canceling these ceremonies was considered “scandalous.”

Despite the richness of the palace, the kings had to make do with makeshift theaters up until 1768 when Louis XV allowed the building of the royal opera. It contained a mechanism that allowed the orchestra level to be raised to the stage allowing it to be used for dancing and banqueting. Spawforth notes that the opera required 3,000 candles to be burnt for opening night and was rarely used due to its cost and the poor shape of France’s finances.

Estate of Marie Antoinette

Near the Grand Trianon, the queen of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, created an estate for herself. She took over a building called the “Petit Trianon” and built a number of structures including a working farm (also called the “hamlet”), which provided the palace with fresh produce, and had a nearby house and small theater.

Some of the structures in the estate have a meaning that is more difficult to understand. She built a “Temple of Love” which modern-day curators say can be seen from her room in the Petit Trianon. It features a dome propped up by nearly a dozen columns covering a statue, which shows a depiction of “Cupid cutting his bow from the club of Hercules,” Bajou writes.  

Even stranger is the “grotto,” a cave, which Marie Antoinette had constructed for herself with a moss bed, which she could lie on. It had two entrances, prompting much speculation as to what went on in it.

American history at Versailles

Two key events in the American Revolution happened at Versailles. Benjamin Franklin, acting on behalf of a newly independent United States, negotiated a treaty with Louis XVI, which led to America getting critical support from the French military.

Spawforth notes that Louis XVI would have one of his inventions, a “Franklin chimney,” installed that produced less smoke than an ordinary fireplace. Franklin was also a keen observer at Versailles noting the presence of wooden booths (merchant stalls) in the Minister’s Court, just in front of the palace. These “ridiculous” structures “accord so little with the majesty of the place” he wrote.

Fittingly, the Treaty of Paris, which formally ended the Revolutionary War, was signed on Sept. 3, 1783, at Versailles, close to the palace in the nearby foreign affairs building. Several decades later, when King Louis Philippe (reign 1830-1848) was turning Versailles into a museum, he would include a painting that depicts the siege of Yorktown, a decisive victory in the Revolutionary War in which the Americans and French cooperated against the British.

America would reciprocate in the 1920s when oil millionaire John D. Rockefeller Jr. paid to have the palace’s expansive roof restored, among other buildings.