The Metropolitan Museum has just made a stunning announcement: 375,000 images from its collections will be made available for free use.

That’s right: free use.  As in, you can use the images freely for both commercial and non-commercial purposes.  You can even adapt, modify or build on them.  This initiative has come about through the Met’s Open Access policy and is being operationalized via Creative Commons.  You can read all about it in this post from the Met’s Facebook page: http://mymodernmet.com/metropolitan-museum-of-art-open-access/

For us, here at Versailles Century, this obviously means worry-free, user-friendly access to hundreds of images of the Château, its contents, and its surroundings.  As a foretaste, here are some images of Versailles from the Met’s collections.

A view of the Château from the courtyard by Sylvestre:

“Château de Versailles seen from the forecourt, from Chalcographie du Louvre, Vol. 22” by Israel Silvestre (French, Nancy 1621–1691 Paris) via The Metropolitan Museum of Art is licensed under CC0 1.0