Versailles
Versailles No Comments »Quick Info on historical sites in Versailles is located in the western suburbs of Paris, 17.1 km. (10.6 miles) from the center of Paris, nearby l’Etang-la-ville. The name of Versailles appears for the first time in a medieval document dated AD 1038. Formerly the de facto capital of the kingdom of France, Versailles is now a wealthy suburb of Paris with 86,000 inhabitants, with a very bourgeois atmosphere reminiscent of its history. Versailles is no longer the capital of France, but it is still the capital of the Yvelines département, and it has an important administrative and judicial center.
Historical Sights in Versailles
The Palace of Versailles
| The Château de Versailles, or Versailles, is a royal château in Versailles, France. In English it is often referred to as the Palace of Versailles. When the château was built, Versailles was a country village, but it is now a suburb of Paris. From 1682, when King Louis XIV moved from Paris, until the royal family was forced to return to the capital in 1789, the Court of Versailles was the center of power in Ancien Régime France.
In 1660, Louis XIV, who was approaching majority and the assumption of full royal |
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| powers, was casting about for a site near Paris but away from the tumults and diseases of the crowded city. He had grown up in the disorders of the civil war between rival factions of aristocrats called the Fronde and wanted a site where he could organize and completely control a government of France by absolute personal rule. He settled on the royal hunting lodge at Versailles, and over the following decades had it expanded into the largest palace in Europe. Versailles is famous not only as a building, but as a symbol of the system of absolute monarchy which Louis XIV espoused. | ||||
The King’s bedchamber |
The Queen’s bedchamber |
The hall of mirrors |
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