The Cour de Marbre is part of the footprint of Louis XIII’s original chateau, which was intended to be nothing more than a hunting lodge and a place of quiet refuge from court life.

The Cour de Marbre facade of the Chateau de Versailles.

Louis XIV, of course, had very different ideas for his father’s hunting lodge.  Still, he respected his father’s memory to such an extent that he planned his expansion of the Chateau around the original building instead of knocking it down and starting fresh.   Thus was born the Enveloppe, literally the “envelope” of new construction that enclosed Louis XIII’s hunting lodge.