X-Nico

15 unusual facts about Palace of Versailles


Ahmed Lutfi el-Sayed

He was a member of the Egyptian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference held in Versailles in 1919, where he pleaded for the independence of Egypt from Britain.

Bretby

This house had a formal garden that rivalled the garden of the Palace of Versailles in the 1640s.

Colt State Park

The marble gates of the main entrance, modeled after the approach to the Petit Trianon at Versailles and unveiled in 1913, bear an inscription: "Colt Farm, Private Property, Public Welcome." A pair of life size bull statues, named Conrad and Pomeroy, guard the gate to the park.

David I. Saperstein

During the 1990s, Saperstein built a 12-bedroom, 15-bathroom Versailles-style estate for his then-wife, Suzanne, sprawled across several acres on Carolwood Drive in Holmby Hills.

Fritz Lindemann

After service in World War I he was a temporary member of the German peace delegation in Versailles.

James Summers

The newspaper contained articles on Windsor Castle, Niagara Falls, the death of Napoleon, the Palace of Versailles, and news related to Britain along with advertisements.

Nicholas Mercator

He designed a marine chronometer for Charles II, and designed and constructed the fountains at the Palace of Versailles (1682–1687).

Paul Barbă Neagră

He was awarded a first prize for the scenario of his film Versailles Palais-Temple du Roi Soleil ("Palace of Versailles, Temple of the Sun King") at the Festival International du Film d’Art (International Festival for Art Films).

Pieter Boel

Whereas artists had contented themselves before with making static studies from stuffed animals, Boel drew and painted his animals from life in the menagerie at Versailles.

Saratoga campaign

On December 4, 1777, word reached Benjamin Franklin at Versailles that Philadelphia had fallen and that Burgoyne had surrendered.

Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn, 3rd Baronet

He engaged in negotiations with Stuart agents in 1740, 1742, and 1743, and went to consult with Louis XV at Versailles.

Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force

By December 1944, SHAEF had established itself in the Trianon Palace Hotel in Versailles, France.

These Old Shades

While at Versailles, the Duke displays Léon before the Comte's wife and his son and heir.

White Swan Hotel, Alnwick

The analogy was an apt one, as the room was decorated in the Louis XV style based on interiors at the Palace of Versailles.

Winnipeg General Strike

The Canadian prime minister attended the conference at Versailles and was concerned solely for his government, due to the Russian revolution that began more than a year before the settlement and concern that it would potentially spread to North America.


Al. Ringling Theatre

The decor of the auditorium is said to have derived from Ange-Jacques Gabriel's opera house of 1763-1770 in the Palace of Versailles but some believe it to be at least equally based on Victor Louis's 1764 Grand-Théâtre in Bordeaux.

Alexander Edward

He was then to travel to Paris and the low countries, visiting Versailles, Marly and St Cloud.

Alexandre Bontemps

Alexandre succeeded him on his death in 1659, dying in office in 1701, by which time he was a count and marquis, holding several key offices controlling both the palaces and towns of Versailles and Marly, the Swiss Guard who guarded the King and his palaces, and the household of the Dauphin.

Antoine Lepautre

Madame de Montespan commissioned him to make plans for her Château de Clagny, close to Versailles; the unfinished project was completed after Lepautre's death by Jules Hardouin-Mansart.

Bernard de Jussieu

Singularly modest and retiring, he published very little, but in 1759 he arranged the plants in the royal garden of the Trianon in the Palace of Versailles, according to his own scheme of classification.

Château de Chalmazel

In the 18th century, the Talarus inherited by marriage the Château de Chamarande, near Arpajon, to the south of Paris, and they moved there to be closer to Versailles where Louis de Talaru held important posts in the royal court and the army.

Étienne de Veniard, Sieur de Bourgmont

The chiefs were to be shown the wonders and power of France, including a visit to Versailles, Château de Marly and Fontainebleau, hunting in the royal forest with Louis XV, and seeing an opera.

Eugénie Charen

Her Matilda makes Malek Abdel promise to become a Christian (1812) was engraved by Mme Soyer, whilst the evocative Inez de Castro and her Children at the feet of the king of Portugal remains at the Trianon Palace at Versailles, near Paris.

François Lespingola

François Lespingola (Joinville, 1644 - Paris, 16 July 1705) was a French sculptor in the team that provided original sculptures, vases and copies after the Antique for the gardens at Versailles.

François-Émile de Lansac

The National Museum of the castles of Versailles and Trianon displays the Portrait équestre du maréchal de la Palisse of 1835.

Gaspard and Balthazard Marsy

Originally from Cambrai, they moved to Paris and were employed by King Louis XIV, particularly for the decoration of the palace and gardens at Versailles.

Giusto Manetti Battiloro

The following years see the company involved in many great works of restoration, years in which the company supplied its gold leaf for some of the greatest monuments all around the world, including the Palace of Versailles, the halls of Windsor Castle, the dome of the Church of the holy sepulchre in Jerusalem and many more.

Jacques Boyceau

It was designed for the patron rather than for the gardener, but it had an influence on the designs of André Le Nôtre, who transformed the manner of Boyceau and of the Mollet dynasty of royal gardeners—Claude Mollet and André Mollet—to create the culminating French Baroque gardens, exemplified at Vaux-le-Vicomte and Versailles.

Jacques Caffieri

A large proportion of his brilliant achievement as a designer and chaser in bronze and other metals was executed for the crown at Versailles, Fontainebleau, Marly, Compiègne, Choisy and the Château de La Muette, and the crown, ever in his debt, still owed him money at his death.

Jean-Baptiste Claude Eugène Guillaume

The Musée du Luxembourg has his Anacreon (1852), Faucheur (1855), and the marble bust of Mgr Darboy; the Versailles Museum the portrait of Thiers; the Sorbonne Library the marble bust of Victor le Clerc, doyen de la faculté des lettres.

Jean-Louis Laneuville

During the French Revolution (1789–95) he portrayed deputies to the Convention, including Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac (1792-3; Kunsthalle Bremen), Pierre-François-Joseph Robert and Joseph Delaunay (1793; Palace of Versailles) and Jules-François Paré (1795; Carnavalet Museum).

Joseph Hyacinthe François de Paule de Rigaud, Comte de Vaudreuil

Following the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789, which marked the beginning of the French Revolution, Vaudreuil, in the company of his old royal comrade, the comte d'Artois, left Versailles on horseback for the Austrian Netherlands.

Kosa Pan

The mission landed at the French port of Brest before continuing its journey to Versailles, constantly surrounded by crowds of curious onlookers.

Letters Written in France

From here the letters describe figures of the Revolution; they also chart her visits to sites that include the ruins of the Bastille, the National Assembly and the Palace of Versailles.

Louis de Noailles

Louis de Noailles, 4th Duke of Noailles (21 April 1713, Versailles – 22 August 1793, Saint-Germain-en-Laye) was a French peer and Marshal of France.

Marc Arcis

In Paris, he took part in the interior decoration of the église de la Sorbonne and produced works for Versailles.

Marquetry

The craft was imported full-blown to France after the mid-seventeenth century, to create furniture of unprecedented luxury being made at the royal manufactory of the Gobelins, charged with providing furnishings to decorate Versailles and the other royal residences of Louis XIV.

Moritzburg Castle

The apartments contain examples of opulence in the lacquered and ornate furniture, such as the Augsburg-made silver furniture styled after Louis XIV's silver furniture at Versailles.

Nicolas Pineau

Pineau, the son of the carver Jean-Baptiste Pineau (died 1694), who appears in the Bâtiments du Roi accounts for Versailles and elsewhere from 1680, was the outstanding talent among those designers and craftsmen who accompanied Alexandre Le Blond to St. Petersburg in 1716.

Paul-Louis Weiller

He subsequently became a philanthropist of the arts; through his influence and financial support, he contributed to the restoration of the Palace of Versailles, created a ballet company, and aided a number of artists (Robert Hossein, Roger Vadim, Maurice Béjart, Michèle Mercier, Brigitte Bardot, Alain Delon, etc.).

Petit appartement de la reine

These rooms, situated behind the grand appartement de la reine, and which now open onto two interior courtyards, were the private domain of the Queens of France, Maria Theresa of Spain, Marie Leszczyńska, and Marie-Antoinette as well as of the duchesse de Bourgogne as dauphine.

Residence organ

Several such purpose-built residence organs survive from centuries past, including Claudio Merulo's organ in the Conservatory of Music in Parma, and the residence organ of Marie Antoinette that is preserved at Versailles.

Revanchism

The conference was not only opened on the anniversary of the proclamation of the Second Reich, the treaty also had to be signed by the new German government in the same room, the Hall of Mirrors.

Richard Mique

He is most remembered for his picturesque hamlet, the Hameau de la Reine — not particularly characteristic of his working style — for Marie Antoinette in the Petit Trianon gardens within the estate of Palace of Versailles.

Sankin-kōtai

King Louis XIV of France instituted a similar practice upon the completion of his Palace at Versailles, requiring the French nobility, particularly the ancient Noblesse d'épée (nobility of the sword) to spend six months of each year at the palace, for reasons similar to those of the Japanese shoguns.