Louis XVI’s library at Versailles is the only room in the Private Apartments (Petits appartements) that the unfortunate monarch substantially altered after he came to the throne.  Otherwise, he left his grandfather Louis XV’s rooms more or less as he found them.

Consequently, this library is also the only room in the Private Apartments that is decorated in the neo-classical style to which Louis XVI has given his name.  Note the rectilinear paneling in the picture below.

Looking into Louis XVI’s library from the west door.

Louis XV had of course also had a library.  In fact, he had several.  A series of small libraries in the attic-level Petits cabinets was constructed for him in the 1730s, including a map room.  He lost interest in the Petits cabinets after the creation of the Private Apartments and eventually made them over to his daughter-in-law, the Dauphine, in 1766.  After her death, they passed to Mme du Barry, for whom an exquisite little library was arranged.  It can be visited today.

The only church that most visitors to Versailles see is the Château’s own chapel.  This is understandable, of course, because it’s the Château that people come to see.  Today, however, we’re going to explore 2 churches in the town of Versailles, the Church of Our Lady (Notre-Dame) and the Cathedral of St. Louis.

The interior of the chapel at the Château de Versailles.

Let’s begin with the older one, the Église Notre-Dame, or the Church of Our Lady.

This church was built quite early in the development of Versailles.  It was erected by Jules Hardouin-Mansart (1646-1708) between 1684 and 1686, presumably in the time that he could spare from his work at the Château.  Remember that Louis XIV had only moved into the Château for good in 1682.

Before the chapel that we see today was completed in 1710, there were other chapels in the Château, but the town needed a church, too, hence the construction of Notre-Dame in the Rue de la Paroisse.  If you walk northward from the Château, you can make the church out as you approach the Place Hoche.

Place Hoche, with the Church of Our Lady (Notre-Dame), one of the 2 main churches of Versailles, clearly visible to the right of the statue.

I didn’t mean to buy the November issue of Architectural Digest, I really didn’t, but I just couldn’t resist the travel feature.  It’s a 3-page spread about the Palazzina Cinese, a gem of a chinoiserie villa in Palermo.

The first page of the AD spread on the Palazzina Cinese.

By strict chronological reckoning, the chinoiserie decor of the Palazzina Cinese falls outside the 1682-1789 timeframe of the Versailles Century because it dates from after 1800.  The spirit of chinoiserie, however, is decidedly 18th century, so I rule it within bounds.  Basta!

The villa was purchased as a holiday home by King Ferdinand of Naples and Sicily* after he arrived in Palermo in 1799.  He’d been driven out of Naples by a republican uprising.  Fortunately, his other kingdom, Sicily, remained loyal.  He and his wife Maria Carolina, sister of Marie-Antoinette, settled down to life in Sicily, which included decorating their new folly.  They promptly settled on a decorative scheme in the ‘Chinese’ taste.

Actually, the rooms feature not just chinoiserie, but also turcquerie, which you can make out in the picture at top left on the second page of the article (see below).

The second page of the AD spread on the Palazzina Cinese.

You can read the full article with its high-quality photos on the AD website.  Check it out here: http://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/palermo-italy-casina-cinese.

*The 2 kingdoms were merged in 1816, after which the unified state was called the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

It’s a sad day for museum lovers and Versailles Century enthusiasts.  As of today, 3 October, 2016, the Carnavalet Museum in Paris is closed for a massive 3-year program of renovations.  If all goes well, it should re-open in the autumn of 2019.

A facade in the main courtyard of the Carnavalet Museum.

The Versailles Century (1682-1789) played out all over the world, thanks in large part to the colonial empires of the European powers, particularly Spain and Portugal.  The latter’s easternmost possession, Macau, is home to the beautiful St. Joseph’s Church.

Macau’s most famous church is of course St. Paul’s, of which only the iconic facade remains.  Most visitors to Macau see (or are taken to see) no other church.

The world-famous ruined facade of St. Paul’s, the iconic sight of Macau.

The victim of a catastrophic fire in 1834, St. Paul’s had also previously been the home of the first European institution of higher learning in the Far East, St. Paul’s College.

Today we visit Madame Victoire’s apartment at Versailles.

Louis XV had 8 daughters, of whom 7 survived to adulthood, and of whom 2 lived long enough to see the Revolution.  Mme Victoire, born in 1733, was the younger of those two.  Like all but one of her sisters, she was sent away from Versailles to the abbey of Fontevrault for her education.  As a Daughter of France, i.e. the daughter of a reigning king, she was called Madame rather than Mademoiselle even though she never married.  This portrait of her was painted when she returned to live at Versailles at the end of her schooling in 1748.

Mme Victoire by Nattier.  Credit: Wikipedia

Curiously, only one of the sisters married.  This was the eldest, Mme Louise Elisabeth, known simply as Madame, later as Madame Infante when she was married at 13 to the Infante Philip of Spain, a younger son of Philip V.  He later inherited his mother’s sovereign duchy of Parma,* thus making him and Mme Louise Elisabeth the founders of the house of Bourbon-Parma,** whose descendants now include all the Catholic royalties of Europe.

By the time their nephew Louis XVI came to the throne in 1774, only 3 of the sisters were left at Versailles: Mme Adelaide, Mme Victoire, and Mme Sophie, who died in 1782.  Mesdames Adelaide and Victoire remained in the apartments that we see today until the royal family were forced to leave the Chateau in October of 1789.  The sisters withdrew to their estate at Bellevue, from which they fled in 1791 to seek refuge in Italy.  Mme Victoire died of breast cancer in Trieste in 1799, leaving Mme Adelaide the sole survivor of the sisterhood until her own death the following year.

In her final years at Versailles, Mme Victoire luxuriated in a suite of 6 principal rooms: an antechamber, a salon, a large drawing room, a bedchamber, a small drawing room, and a library.  Few people at Versailles had such spacious lodgings.  Even duchesses had to make do with a garret if they were not in favour, and anyone who could afford it kept a house in the town of Versailles as an escape from their cramped quarters in the Chateau.

Today I’m pleased to bring you Versailles Century’s first house tour, except the house is now a hotel.  I’ll explain.

The most famous facade of the Palacio do Freixo.

The Palacio do Freixo was built around 1750 on the banks of the Douro river near Porto for one Dom Jeronimo de Tavora e Noronha.  Portuguese Wikipedia informs me that he was a wealthy gentleman with estates in the Douro valley.   He was also the heir of the Dean of the Porto Cathedral, and was instrumental in bringing Nicolau Nasoni (see the previous post), the Italian artist and architect who designed the Palacio, to Porto in 1725 to work on projects for the archdiocese.  Dom Geronimo left the Palacio to his younger brother, a knight in the Order of Malta, whose descendants sold it in the 19th century to a rich merchant, who built a soap factory next door.  It passed through several more hands and uses before finally being declared a national monument in 1910.  The Porto municipal administration acquired it 1986 and extensive restoration work was undertaken between 2000 and 2003.  Since 2009, the Pestana Group has operated it as a pousada, or heritage hotel.

I take these to be Dom Jeronimo de Tavora e Noronha’s arms.

We’ll take a tour of the Palacio as a historic house in this post, and in the next one I’ll review it as a hotel.

Porto, Portugal’s second city, was founded in Roman times, but came into its own during the Versailles Century.

Porto’s historic heart with the cathedral and archbishop’s palace on the hilltop.

Brazilian gold flowing across the Atlantic after the discovery of the precious yellow metal in Minas Gerais in the 1690s, combined with the boom in the port wine trade after the signing of the Methuen Treaty with Great Britain in 1703, made Porto rich.  Much of the loot was spent on spectacular churches.  Modern visitors to the city will find the built heritage of the northern Portuguese Baroque all around them.  The star exhibits are the buildings designed by the transplant Nicolau Nasoni (1691-1773), an all-around talent who arrived from Italy to execute some paintings for the archbishop and stayed for the rest of his life, undertaking not only paintings, but interior design and architecture.

Versailles: A Visit to the King’s Private Apartments, Part 2

In the late afternoon of the first day of my visit to Versailles, I went along to the ticket office of the Chateau to buy my ticket for the next day, including a guided tour of the Private Apartments.  There were various tours in several languages, but the young woman behind the counter flatteringly recommended that I take the French language tour at 10:30, on the grounds that it was the most thorough one.  I duly purchased a ticket and wandered off in the rain — the weather was relentlessly wet throughout my visit — to find my dinner.

Semi-restored room in the ticket wing. My inner interior decorator sees some sleek Italian sofas and striking contemporary art in here.

All but skipping with excitement, I turned up the following morning at the designated entrance for the Private Apartments tour.  This entrance is on the north side of the Cour Royale (the Royal Court), the great courtyard that precedes the Cour de Marbre (the Marble Court) at the heart of the palace.  A uniformed man checked my ticket and waved me inside.  A young woman in a smart black pantsuit and a headset then asked me which tour I was there for, and directed me into an adjoining salon.  This turned out to be the holding tank for imminent tours.  It retained its 18th century boiserie, but was furnished with sleek contemporary furniture, which I’m tempted to say was by Philippe Starck, but I’m not sure.  Another pant-suited young lady appeared and gave me a pair of earphones.  I nearly protested that I hadn’t asked for an audio guide, but held my peace.  All became clear when the actual guide appeared, a brisk, middle-aged Frenchwoman.  She instructed us to put in our earbuds and see if we could hear her on the audio system that was connecting us.  A very sensible system, this.  Nothing is more annoying on a guided tour than straining, and failing, to hear what the guide is saying.  We were a group of about 15 or 20.  As far as I could tell, I was the only non-francophone apart from a young woman from Brazil who was studying art history in Paris, which I know because we had a chat after the tour.  In fact, it turned out that she was taking a course on museology and asked me if I would oblige her by taking a short survey about my Versailles experience.  I obliged, of course.

Versailles: A Visit to the King’s Private Apartments, Part 1.

It’s a little embarrassing to admit, given my longstanding interest in the place and the fact that I have a degree in French, that I didn’t visit Versailles, or even Paris, until April of this year. Basically, I was distracted for nearly 20 years by my work and travels in Asia, which you can read more about on my other blog and gallery website, Lotus & Persimmon.

I’m happy to say that Versailles lived up to 30 years of expectation.  My visit did not proceed quite as planned, though.  I had devised a very specific program for myself:

Day 1: Take a midday train from Paris to Versailles; check in to my hotel; scout the town; but my tickets for the Chateau for the next day; wander in the gardens of the Chateau; dine in the town; turn in early.

Day 2: Join a guided tour of the Private Apartments; see the State Rooms; have lunch in the town; see Mesdames’ Apartments; visit the Musee Lambinet in the town; dine in the town again; turn in early.

Day 3: Visit the Trianons in the morning; have lunch in town; take an early afternoon train back to Paris.

Needless to say there was a fly in the ointment, which in this case was the weather.  Late March and early April 2016 were very wet in France (and Portugal, as I subsequently experienced).  I saw very little of the gardens because of the frequent downpours, and by the end of Day 2 I simply abandoned the idea of visiting the Trianons, which was just as well because the Chateau was closed on Day 3 due to a transport strike!  I was lucky even to make it back to Paris.

Versailles from the garden on a rainy day.