The Hall of Mirrors. 
The Grand Trianon.
The Palace and Gardens.
Part of the Palace reflected in one of the water features.
Louis XIV of France wanted to build a palace fit for an Absolute Monarch. The result was Versailles. It had a theatre as well as a chapel, and in the grounds a lake to rival Hampton Courts. There was also a pair of smaller palaces, the Grand Trianon for the King and the Petit Trianon for the Queen. The gardens were full of water features, but there wasn't enough water to run them all at once, so the gardeners would run around frantically trying to anticipate where the King would go on his walks, and turn fountains on and off as he went.
The Hall of Mirrors has been the scene of treaties and important international meetings over the centuries.
Louis XVI's wife, the notorious Marie Antoinette, spent much of her life playing at being a shepherdess. She would drive her flock of sheep across a rustic bridge to a small hamlet built near her small palace, where there remain all sorts of little thatched buildings, including a mill.
Versailles or Hampton Court? Versailles is a composition of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, with more of an overall conception. Hampton Court is the result of innumerable additions (and subtractions) over hundreds of years.
1 comment:
I had no idea Marie Antoinette was a shepherdess! In high school I went on a school trip to London & Paris and we visited Versailles. I don't remember much about that trip except for being exhausted, but the Hall of Mirrors stood out. Thanks for helping to refresh my memory!
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