Palace of VersaillesOne axis reaching the woods

A walk down the central axis

Versailles, France — Palace and gardens.

Stand at the gatehouse end first.

The line ahead runs dead straight: first paving, then two stretches of still water, then lawns, with a group of bronze statues at the centre, finally gathered in by the woods. Reclining bronze figures lie at the pool's edge, their colour darkened, the water holding clouds and rooftops until a breeze wrinkles it. The trees by the parterres are clipped into cones and balls, standing in rows along the gravel paths, their shadows short enough not to block the way. Many walk here, yet the sound disperses; the further west you go, the more it's only the crunch of gravel underfoot.

Turn into a side avenue and the light suddenly breaks. Two rows of tall trees tunnel the path between them, a small patch of white bright at the end, several minutes to reach. Outside the tree lines are lattice hedges, through which you can see the parterres on the other side. Look back and the palace becomes a gold edge in the distance — only now can you tell how long that straight axis really is.

A hunting lodge of 1623

This ground is mentioned in a monastery deed of 1038, and in the Middle Ages it was a few villages, farmland and woodland. In the sixteenth century it belonged to the Gondi family, people of standing at court. Louis XIII bought part of the land in 1623 and completed the rest in 1632.

What he built first was not a palace but a brick-and-stone hunting lodge, about thirty-five metres long, with a central block and a wing on each side, surrounded by marsh. Red brick, white stone and blue-grey slate set side by side earned it the jeering nickname 'the shabby château' or 'the card-house château'. The great palace later grew around that little lodge.

The lodge fixed the axis. Every later expansion pushed west along it, and the garden's symmetry was measured from that line. Stand at the gatehouse today and you can see straight to the woods not because of one plan but because generations never changed direction.

The court that moved in, in 1682

Louis XIV formally moved the court and government here, taking up residence on 6 May 1682 and staying until 6 October 1789, apart from the Regency of 1715–1723 when Paris was the seat again. Louis XV and Louis XVI followed. The palace was his largest building project and is taken as a masterpiece of French classical architecture; many European palaces and decorations of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries followed its lead.

Its scale can be guessed from numbers: about 63,000 square metres of floor area, roughly 2,300 rooms, of which about 1,000 belong to the Museum of French History housed in the palace and at Trianon. Courtyards, palace blocks and side wings nest one inside another, yet from outside the skyline stays as even as possible.

Before 1682 this was a royal residence visited now and then; after, it became a place where government and daily life happened at once. Room functions changed many times; only doorframes, panelling and ceilings show the layers, and the furniture and furnishings are long since not original.

The gardens larger than the palace

Today the estate is about 815 hectares; before the Revolution it exceeded 8,000. The formal French gardens within it cover 93 hectares. Beyond the gardens lie the Grand Trianon, the Petit Trianon, the Queen's Hamlet, the Grand and Petit Canals, the Orangerie, the Swiss Pond and the former menagerie.

These names spread far and can't be covered in one visit. Most people stay near the axis; walk a few hundred metres sideways and the voices fade. The avenues, parterres and pools each have their own scale, understood best on foot.