Palace of Versailles

Description

The Palace of Versailles is a former royal residence located in Versailles, about 12 miles (19 km) west of Paris, France. The palace is owned by the French Republic and has since 1995 been managed, under the direction of the French Ministry of Culture, by the Public Establishment of the Palace, Museum and National Estate of Versailles 15,000,000 people visit the Palace, Park, or Gardens of Versailles every year, making it one of the most popular tourist attractions in the world. However, due to the , the number of paying visitors to the Chateau dropped by 75 percent from eight million in 2019 to two million in 2020. The drop was particularly sharp among foreign visitors, who account for eighty percent of paying visitors I built a simple hunting lodge on the site of the Palace of Versailles in 1623 and replaced it with a small château in 1631–34. expanded the château into a palace in several phases from 1661 to 1715. It was a favorite residence for both kings, and in 1682, Louis XIV moved the seat of his court and government to Versailles, making the palace the capital of France. This state of affairs was continued by Kings and , who primarily made interior alterations to the palace, but in 1789 the royal family and capital of France returned to Paris. For the rest of the the Palace of Versailles was largely abandoned and emptied of its contents, and the population of the surrounding city plummeted. Napoleon Bonaparte, following his takeover of France, used Versailles as a summer residence from 1810 to 1814, but did not restore it. When the French Monarchy was restored, it remained in Paris and it was not until the 1830s that meaningful repairs were made to the palace. A museum of French history was installed within it, replacing the apartments of the southern wing. The palace and park were designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1979 for its importance as the center of power, art, and science in France during the 17th and 18th centuries The French Ministry of Culture has placed the palace, its gardens, and some of its subsidiary structures on its list of culturally significant monuments. In 1623, King of France, built a hunting lodge on a hill in a favorite hunting ground, 12 miles (19 km) west of Paris, and 10 miles (16 km) from his primary residence, the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye. The site, near a village named Versailles was a wooded wetland that court scorned as being generally unworthy of a king; one of his courtiers, François de Bassompierre, wrote that the lodge "would not inspire vanity in even the simplest gentleman". From 1631 to 1634, architect Philibert Le Roy replaced the lodge with a château for who forbade his queen, Anne of Austria, from staying there overnight, even when an outbreak of smallpox at Saint-Germain-en- Laye in 1641 forced to relocate to Versailles with his three-year-old heir, the future

Facts about Acropolis

• France's kings were first attracted to Versailles because of the area's prolific game. Louis XIII, who lived 1601-1643, bought up land, built a chateau and went on hunting trips. At the time, much of the land around Versailles was uncultivated, allowing wild animals to flourish.
• The chateau Louis XIII built was little more than a hunting lodge having enough space to house the king and a small entourage. It was his successor, (1638-1715), the "Sun King," a ruler who chose the sun as his emblem and believed in centralized government with the king at its center, who would radically transform Versailles making it the seat of France's government by the time of his death...
• 72 years, and in that time transformed Versailles by encompassing Louis XIII's chateau with a palace that contained north and south wings, as well as nearby buildings housing ministries.
• A series of gardens, created in a formal style, stood to the west of the palace (one of them today is in the shape of a star) and contained sculptures as well as the pressurized fountains capable of launching water high into the air
• The formality and grandeur of the gardens symbolized Louis XIV's absolute power, even over nature, according to Gudek Snajder..

Details Of This Palace

1	Construction started		:		1634
2	Old name		:		Château de Versailles
3	material		:		red brick, white stone and grey slate
4	Length		:		73 meters (239.5 feet) long,
5	Height		:		12.3 meters (40.4 feet)
6	Width		:		10.5 meters (34.4 feet)

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