In the wake of the recent closing of the Carnavalet Museum for renovations, we’re touring some of its Versailles Century-related exhibits. Today we inspect what I’ve dubbed the ‘Green Salon.’

The ‘Green Salon’ in the Carnavalet Museum.

You see that info placard in the centre?  I usually photograph such things as a memory aid, but for some reason I forgot to snap it.  The official name of this room, not to mention its provenance, was on that placard. All memory of it is gone, and the museum’s website says nothing about it. Hence I’ve dubbed it simply the ‘Green Salon,’ after the mint-green trim on the boiseries.  It’s obviously from some Louis XV-era aristocratic residence in Paris, but if you know which one, please comment below.

In the wake of this week’s closing of the Carnavalet Museum for a 3-year program of renovations, I’ve decided to devote this and the next several posts to highlights of the museum’s collections.  Today we inspect the Escalier de Luynes, or the Luynes staircase, which was once in the now-disappeared Hôtel de Luynes, townhouse of the dukes of Luynes.*

Marble steps of the Escalier de Luynes in the Carnavalet Museum.

One of the things that makes the Carnavalet Museum so special is that it showcases complete rooms and architectural elements from buildings that no longer exist, or whose interiors have been completely altered.  In other words, the minds behind the museum were farsighted early preservationists who already in the late 19th century were salvaging priceless treasures of Paris’s built heritage that would otherwise have been lost forever.

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.

In this edition of VC Museum Visits, we tour the Museum-School of Portuguese Decorative Arts in Lisbon.

Located in the shadow of an ancient Moorish wall in the hillside district of Alfama, this exquisite museum is run by the Ricardo Espirito de Santo Silva Foundation.*  It’s housed in the former palace of the Viscounts of Azurara, which the late Senhor Espirito do Santo Silva (1900-1955), a banker and lavish patron of the arts, purchased in 1947 specifically for the purpose of creating a museum.  A lifelong admirer of Alfama, Lisbon’s most historic district, he was also keen to preserve the skills and traditions of the artisans who lived in the area, hence the inclusion of a school in the foundation.

I knew I was going to love it as soon as I saw what was in the vestibule.

A Cinderella-like 18C carriage in the vestibule.

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.

Hotel: Pestana Palacio do Freixo, also known as the Pousada do Porto.

Address: Estrada Nacional 108, 4300, Campanha, Porto, Porto e Norte, Portugal (about 4km from the centre of Porto).

Website: http://www.pestana.com/en/hotel/freixo-palace/

Rating: Excellent.

The most famous facade of the Palacio do Freixo.

I stayed at the Palacio for one night at the beginning of April, 2016.  Run by Pestana Hotels, the Palacio is classified as a national monument, and is also a member of Portugal’s national association of pousadas.

Reception: The check-in process was very smooth.  As soon as I entered the lobby, I was ushered to a comfortable chair in front of the reception desk in a chamber next to the Moorish lobby.  Although the formalities took only a few minutes, I was served a small glass of port.  The young man who had first greeted me at the door also showed me to my room.  This was a nice touch and probably necessary because the layout of the Palacio is complicated.

Flower arrangement in the Moorish lobby. Reception is to the left.

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.

It’s true.  I dined in a duchess’s boudoir at the Chateau de Versailles.  Full confession: the duchess’s boudoir is nowadays known as Angelina’s, the Versailles outpost of the celebrated Parisian tea room.

Generally speaking, I don’t care to eat or drink at establishments that are inside tourist attractions, on the grounds that they are usually crowded and over-priced.  However, sometimes options are in short supply.  Such was the case on a very rainy day in late March (2016) during my visit to the Chateau.  Having just toured the Private Apartments (see the 2 previous posts) and the State Rooms, I was footsore, hungry, and slightly dehydrated.  My preference would have been to leave the Chateau and find a restaurant in the town, but one look out the window at people struggling to control their umbrellas in the gusting winds sent me in search of a restaurant inside the Chateau.  As far as I could make out, there was only one.  I followed the signs until I arrived here:

Sign at the entrance of Angelina’s tea room and restaurant in the Chateau de Versailles.

Naturally, I was not alone in having this notion and I was confronted by a long line of fellow visitors waiting for a table.  Angelina’s is known primarily known as a tea room, but it does offer a limited menu of light meals.  The line for the self-serve snackbar was shorter, but I wanted to have a hot meal.  So I waited.  And waited.  For 40 minutes.  The wait turned out to be worth it, though.

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.