Apollo On Ice, Palace of Versailles, France

Apollo On Ice, Palace of Versailles

I must admit I was not prepared for the grandeur on display at the Palace of Versailles. The size, scale, and opulence of the place is quite overwhelming when seen for the first time.

Once the home to generations of Kings and Queens of France, the Palace of Versailles stands as a stark reminder of the many excesses of King Louis XIV (14th) in particular, and that of his heirs and successors. Excesses which became exposed for all to see with the onset of the French Revolution in 1789.

It’s not just the 700 rooms, the 6,000+ paintings, 1,500 drawings, and more than 15,000 engravings. Nor is it the sight of 2,100 sculptures and around 5,200 pieces of furniture and objets d’art, which overwhelms. No, it is all these and more. Including the 800 hectares of woodlands, landscaped gardens, fountains, Grand Canals, and many nooks and hidden corners, which surround the main Palace building. Then there are the Grand Trianon, Marie-Antoinette’s estate, numerous copses and groves, fountains and open-air salons, the King’s Garden, the Apollo Baths, the Ornamental Lake of The Dragon, and other locations large and small.

I walked around part of the massive Palace grounds on a freezing December day, with the snow crunching underfoot, a light mist clinging to the ground, and my warm breath hanging in the air.

I took many photographs that day under a dark, grey sky, and the image I’ve selected for this post captures that setting very well. In the image we see the Sun god Apollo, mounted on his chariot, emerging from the frozen waters of the Apollo Fountain (located in the Grand Canal). The horses themselves seem to be springing out of the icy water, following close on the heels of the bugler leading them.

The work of Tuby, after a drawing by the French artist, Le Brun, this monumental sculpture was designed and cast between 1668 and 1670, then transported to Versailles and installed and gilded the following year.

Jardin des Tuileries, Paris

Image: The Tuileries Garden, Paris: a stark winter landscape of bare trees, and light snow

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During my visit to Paris earlier this month, I spent some time walking through parts of the massive Jardin des Tuileries (Tuileries Garden).

I say ‘parts of’ deliberately, because like many locations in Paris – the Louvre, Palace of Versailles, Musée d’Orsay, and other popular attractions – you need a lot more than a few hours to explore and appreciate these historic sites. The Tuileries Garden is wonderful to experience on cold winter days, when the snow covers the ground, your breath hangs in the freezing air, and most of the trees in the garden have shed their leaves and their dark, rain soaked trunks and branches stand out starkly against the frigid landscape.

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The Tuileries Garden seen from the west- the Fer à cheval (horseshoe), Grand Bassin Octagonal, and the Grande Allée ending at the Louvre [Source: Wikipedia… ]

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The Jardin des Tuileries (Tuileries Garden), is a public garden located between the Louvre Museum and the Place de la Concorde. Created by Marie de Medicis as the garden of the Tuileries Palace in 1564, it was first opened to the public in 1667, and became a public park after the French Revolution. Since then it has become the place where Parisians come to promenade, meet, celebrate, and relax.

The garden’s name comes from workshops called tuileries, which used to exist on the current site, and which made tiles for the roofs of Paris’s buildings.

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Image: Winter colours of the Tuileries Garden, Paris

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The Garden of Catherine de Medicis

In July 1559, after the death of her husband, Henry II, Queen Catherine de Medicis decided to move from her residence near the Bastille, to the Louvre Palace, along with her son, the new King, François II. While there she decided to build a new palace for herself, separate from the Louvre, with a garden modeled after the gardens of her native Florence.

The garden of Catherine de Medicis was an enclosed space five hundred meters long and three hundred meters wide, separated from the new chateau by a lane. It was divided into rectangular compartments by six alleys, and the sections were planted with lawns, flower beds, and small clusters of five trees, called Quinconces; and, more practically, with kitchen gardens and vineyards.

The Tuileries was the largest and most beautiful garden in Paris at the time, and Catherine used it for lavish royal festivities honoring ambassadors from the Queen of England, and the marriage of her daughter, Marguerite de Valois, to the future Henry IV.

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Tuileries Garden of Le Nôtre in 17^th century, looking west toward the future Champs Elysees, Engraving by Perelle. [Source: Wikipedia… ]

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And so it went. One Monarch after another overseeing the planting of hedges, hundreds of trees, shrubs, flowers and other plants, landscaping and reshaping the grounds, adding sculptures here, water features and fountains there, as well as vast terraces and a Grand Allée – rivaled only by the 1500 metre Grand Allée at the Palace of Versailles.

Following the deaths of Catherine de Medicis and her successors, the Kings, Henry III and IV, responsibility for the upkeep and maintenance of the garden fell to that other great line of kings, King Louis XIII (13^th), XIV, XV and then King Louis XVI (16^th), until finally the French Revolution of October, 1789 brought a stop to the whole circus – for a while at least.

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Image: Evergreen shrubs in the Tuileries Garden, Paris

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The French Revolution and Beyond

On October 6, 1789, as the French Revolution began, King Louis XVI was brought from Versailles to the Tuileries Palace. He was subsequently found guilty of high treason for his part in the insurrection of August 10th, 1792, and executed by guillotine in January 1793.

When Napoleon Bonaparte (who was about to become Emperor), moved into the Tuileries Palace in February, 1800, he began making improvements to the gardens and the cycle of building, landscaping, plantings and so on began all over again. Eventually, the long suffering citizens of France and Paris had had enough, and following the fall of Napoleon, and the subsequent reigns of the Kings, Charles X and Louis-Philippe, and the Emperor, Louis Napoleon, the whole imperial edifice of the French Republic was brought to the ground by the uprising of the Paris Commune in 1870.

When the army arrived and fought to recapture the city, the Communards deliberately burned the Tuileries Palace, and tried to burn the Louvre as well. The ruins of the Tuileries Palace were not torn down until 1883, and the empty site of the palace, between the two pavilions of the Louvre, became part of the Tuileries Garden you see today.

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Image: Footprints in the snow: Tuileries Garden, Paris

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More Information

As always, my indispensable source of historical information continues to be Wikipedia. Read more about the Jardin des Tuileries here…

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You can see more of my photographs of the Jardin Des Tuileries via my Flickr page here... Or see all my Flickr images by following this link...

Palace of Versailles Gardens

Image: Plan of the chateau of Versailles and the gardens dating from 1746, by the Abbé Delagrive, geographer of the city of Paris.

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The gardens of Versailles cover 800 hectares. I don’t know who has the job of counting them, but according to Wikipedia which uses the official Château de Versailles website as its source, there are 200,000 trees on site, and 210,000 flowers are planted annually, as well as 50 fountains spraying 620 jets of water into the air. The surface area of the Grand Canal covers 23 ha., and if you want to walk the perimeter of the Grand Canal, you should be prepared for a stroll of over 5.5 km.

However, none of these facts and figures really capture the overwhelming size and scope of the grounds surrounding the main Palace building, and as I wrote in my last entry Viva la Revolution, it is while walking around these grounds and gardens that the grandeur of Versailles really overpowers you and hits home.

I spent a couple of hours walking through the grounds on a freezing winter afternoon, with the snow crunching underfoot, and a low mist hanging over the long allies and landscaped gardens. It was hard to believe that the hustle and bustle of metropolitan Paris with its 12 million inhabitants lay sprawling around the site.

The gardens of Versailles occupy part of what was once the Domaine royal de Versailles. Situated to the west of the palace, the gardens cover some 800 hectares of land, much of which is landscaped in the classic French Garden style perfected here by André Le Nôtre. In addition to the meticulous manicured lawns, beds of flowers and sculptures, are the fountains which are located throughout the garden. Dating from the time of Louis XIV and still using much of the same network of hydraulics as was used during the Ancien Régime, the fountains contribute to making the gardens of Versailles unique. In 1979, the gardens along with the château were added to the UNESCO World Heritage List, and are one of the most visited public sites in France, receiving more than six million visitors a year. [Source: Wikipedia...]

Where the main building was packed with a constant stream of visitors filing dutifully through grand halls, past royal bedchambers, and room after room filled with a priceless paintings, sculptures and other objects, the gardens were almost devoid of people or the constant presence of security personnel and other staff. I felt as if I had the whole garden complex to myself, and rarely saw or heard anyone else as I wandered down long allies, exploring side paths and small alcoves, while discovering just a small part of this incredible place.

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Image: Bosquet de la Salle de Bal, Versailles

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The World English Dictionary defines a bosquet as: (noun) a clump of small trees or bushes; thicket

The Salle de Bal (ballroom?) bosquet was designed and built between 1681–1683. It features a semi-circular cascade that forms the backdrop for this ‘green hall’. Interspersed with gilt lead flares, which supported candelabra for illumination, the Salle de Bal was inaugurated in 1683 by Louis XIV’s son, the Grand Dauphin, with a dance party.

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Image: The frozen over Bacchus Fountain in the gardens of Versailles

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The Bacchus Fountain (also called the Autumn fountain), is one of four fountains dedicated to the seasons and can be found near the Royal Walk. Bacchus, a figure of Roman mythology is said to have taught the cultivation of the vine throughout the world. He is regarded as the god of wine and drunkenness, and in this sculpture he is surrounded by small satyrs, half child and half goat.

It wasn’t until I reached the Grand Canal that I encountered people in numbers, and even then, there were nowhere near the numbers one might expect to see on a warm summer day at the height of the tourist season.

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Image: Allie du Roy (the King’s Alley), one of many that crisscross Palace grounds and gardens

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Image: The 1,500 metre long Grand Canal disappears into the distance

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It was Louis XIII who began the program to layout the gardens of Versailles in the 1630s, and it was Claude Mollet and Hilaire Masson who designed the gardens, which remained relatively unchanged until the expansion ordered under Louis XIV in the 1660s. With the aid of the architect Louis Le Vau, the painter Le Brun, and landscape architect André Le Nôtre, Louis began an embellishment and expansion program at Versailles that would keep him occupied for the remainder of his reign – as it would successive kings and rulers.

Like many of the most famous locations around Paris, you need at least two days – and preferably three – to explore the Palace of Versailles and surrounding gardens with any type of thoroughness. I was there for less than a day and never saw any of The Grand Trianon or anything of Marie-Antoinette’s estate. I missed most of the copses and groves, fountains and open-air salons, the King’s Garden, the Apollo Baths, the Ornamental Lake of The Dragon, and many other locations large and small as well as dozens of sculptures that had been covered over to protect them from the harsh winter elements.

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Image: the statue of Apollo (in the Grand Canal) trying to break out of encroaching ice!

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One could of course, make a good argument for leveling the whole site and turning the acreage into cheap public housing for those that need it most, but then people might forget the reasons for the French Revolution: the poverty and hunger; the near financial bankruptcy of the Crown following France’s involvement in the Seven Years War and its participation in the American Revolutionary War; and the perception by many French people that the Royal Court at Versailles was isolated from, and indifferent to the hardships they were facing. These are just a few of the reasons behind the upheaval leading to the revolution of 1789.

As I said in my previous entry on Versailles, I can’t think of any modern political leaders who wouldn’t love to be able to bask in the glory and opulence of a Palace like Versailles. Which is why the Palace of Versailles should be maintained and kept open to the public and visitors from all over the world – to remind them that absolute power, corrupts absolutely. And to remind them that if they are not vigilant the power elite will happily create their own versions of Versailles.

You may be thinking: But they are doing that anyway, and it is true, they are. Saddam Hussein had palaces to spare. The former Shah of Iran had his own grand palaces before he was thrown out by the Iranian revolution of 1979. No doubt, Kim Jong-il of North Korea is happily sheltered from the hungry eyes of ordinary North Koreans in one of his many citadels. President Ferdinand Marcos and his shoe fetishist wife Imelda had their own versions of Versailles amongst the poverty and corruption of the Philippines before Corazon ’Corey’ Aquino led the People Power revolution in the 1980s, that finally brought an end to their indulgences. And so it goes on.

But I say again, that is exactly why the Palace of Versailles should stay. To remind the French and the thousands of people who visit the site, that not only should they remain vigilant, but also to give them hope that together they can challenge the power elites that govern them, and that they can make a difference.

More Information

All of the factual historical information used in this and my previous entry about the Palace of Versailles is drawn from two internet sites; the Official Palace of Versailles website… and numerous pages on Wikipedia (that wonderful and indispensable online knowledge base), including the Gardens of Versailles page…

Vive La Revolution!

Image: Part of the massive main building that is the Palace of Versailles

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If you ever needed to be convinced that revolutions – even violent revolutions – are necessary, just visit the Palace of Versailles, in France. Here amongst the opulence and splendor that marked the reign of King Louis XIV (14th), and successive French rulers, the reason for revolution is writ large. Larger than large, in fact. Here is grandeur, extravagance, wealth, and sumptuousness of the highest order. No wonder then, that on the eve of the French Revolution in 1789, it was at Versailles that the citizens of Paris came to demand that Louis XVI (16th) return to Paris to face the wrath of the people.

The Palace of Versailles is a royal château in Versailles, the Île-de-France region of France. The court of Versailles was the centre of political power in France from 1682, when Louis XIV moved from Paris, until the royal family was forced to return to the capital in October 1789 after the beginning of the French Revolution. Versailles is therefore famous not only as a building, but as a symbol of the system of absolute monarchy of the Ancien Régime. [Source: Wikipedia…]

The Palace of Versailles consists of 700 rooms providing around 67,000 square meters of floor space. The Palace’s collections include over 6,000 paintings, 1,500 drawings, and more than 15,000 engravings. Add to these 2,100 sculptures and around 5,200 pieces of furniture and objets d’art, and you get some idea of the size and scope of this amazing historical site.

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Image: The massive Hall of Battles at Versailles

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In room after room, luxury and indulgence seemed to be trying to outdo each other. Just when you think the fittings and decorations, the massive paintings adorning walls and ceilings couldn’t get bigger or better, they do. When you think nothing could top the massive Hall Of Battles (see photo above) and the 33 huge paintings located there depicting scenes from some of France’s greatest victories, and which also includes 82 busts of various military leaders who died in action in many of the battles depicted in the paintings; just when you think nothing can top that you walk into the equally massive Great Hall of Mirrors.

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The Great Hall of Mirrors, Palace of Versailles. Image courtesy of Arnaud 25

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Ceiling view of the Hall of Mirrors, Versailles

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The French painter Charles Le Brun, is responsible for decorating the ceilings in the Hall of Mirrors (Galerie des Glaces), with a series of stunning paintings only equaled by his other works at Versailles in the Halls of War and Peace (Salons de la Guerreand de la Paix), and the Ambassadors' Staircase. It was not for nothing that Louis XIV declared Le Brun "the greatest French artist of all time".

The dimensions of the Hall of Mirrors' are 73.0m × 10.5m × 12.3m (239.5ft × 34.4ft × 40.4ft). The ceiling decoration is dedicated to the political policies and military victories of Louis XIV. The central panel of the ceiling, Le roi governe par lui-même (The king governs alone) alludes to the establishment of the personal reign of Louis XIV in 1661. Other panels represent the military victories of the king beginning with the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659), through to the Treaty of Nijmegen in 1678.

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Image: Part of just one of the many wonderful ceiling paintings at Versailles

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Images of King Louis XIV swanning his way down long passageways and through vast rooms, flash through my head. Look! Here he comes now, closely followed by a retinue of handlers, hangers-on, and assorted family members, while courtiers, foreign visitors and gawkers wait and watch to catch a glimpse of his supreme eminence.

Does he pause to admire the monumental work of Veronese called, The Feast in The House of Simon – a gift of the Viennese court? As he enters the cavernous Chapel to attend Mass (where years later, Marie-Antoinette married Louis XVI), does he stop to chat with one or two of the lesser leaders of the day, who are here to curry favor and bask in his attention – no matter how brief or cursory?

I suspect he barely gives them more than a passing glance. It is enough to know they are there, and that he has created a building large enough to house monumental works of art, as well as draw sycophants and other toady’s to his palatial home far from the Paris mob. A palace big enough to satisfy even his overblown ego. For surely that is the point of Versailles. To show that this one person has the power to call upon the greatest builders of his era to carve stone, bend and shape timber, weave giant tapestries, plant and landscape hundreds of acres of land, and to do this all at his behest with little or no regard to cost in terms of either monetary value or the human cost of this monumental construction project.

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Ceiling decorations in the Royal Chapel at Versailles. Image courtesy of Diliff

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I am not sure if we will ever see buildings like Versailles being created again. Not because we don’t have the money, but because there are so few people of vision around who could design, let alone build palaces like Versailles. And if there were? Would people allow such wanton excess? Such extravagance and splendor? It’s not just the scale of the building, but the detailed extras that have been incorporated into the design that impress and shock.

Statues and friezes, fountains and gilded furnishings, landscaped gardens, manicured lawns, broad mile-long pathways and secluded alcoves. Was there anything not included in the scope and design of Versailles? I suspect that pretty much every skill in design and artistry extant at the time the Palace was being built, was used in some way in the extensive building process that went on even after Louis XIV was long dead and gone.

Sadly, I can’t think of any modern political leaders who wouldn’t love to be able to bask in the glory and opulence of a Palace of Versailles. How it would feed their egos and pander to their vanities! How they would delight in being surrounded by fawning acolytes and supplicants seeking to curry favour and win even the briefest of passing attention.

It is exactly for this reason that places like that Palace of Versailles need to be maintained and kept open – as a reminder and proof that absolute power, corrupts absolutely. That if the people are not vigilant, if they are satisfied with bread and circuses, the power elite will happily create their own versions of Versailles, and continue to run the game exactly as they wish to.

Having toured through the Palace, you can either leave Versailles and head back to central Paris, or you can go for a walk in the grounds and gardens that surround the main building. It is here that the grandeur of Versailles really overpowers you, and it was while I was walking around the grounds that the full impact of Versailles hit home. But that’s a story for another day.