It has been said that Louis XIV built Versailles for his court, Trianon for himself, and Marly for his friends.

To that end, Marly consisted of a main house for the King and his immediate family, and 12 guest pavilions.  Each pavilion contained 2 apartments, one on each floor.  If each guest was married, as many as 48 people could be accommodated.  The pavilions faced each other across a water feature in two rows of 6.  As the picture below shows, Marly was surrounded by forested hills, which must have given it a pleasing sense of privacy.

The Domaine de Marly as it appeared in 1724. Credit: fr.wikipedia.org.

Apart from the Queen, and later the King’s second wife, Mme de Maintenon, only his brother, Monsieur, and his son, the Dauphin, had the right to accompany the King to Marly without being invited and had their own permanent rooms there.  Everyone else, even other members of the royal family and the Princes of the Blood (i.e. the King’s cousins), had to apply for an invitation, either to the King’s private secretary, or directly to the King himself.  As the day for a departure to Marly approached, courtiers would murmur, “Sire, Marly?” as the Grand Monarque made his way from his bedroom at Versailles through the Hall of Mirrors to the chapel.  If the King invited a lady to Marly, her husband was automatically included, unlike at Trianon, where he was not.  Naturally, invitations were highly sought after.

We’ll get to my favourite bookshop in Lisbon, Livraria Sà da Costa, in a minute.

First, a word on Portuguese secondhand and antiquarian bookshops in general (called albufarristas in Portuguese) — I’ve never seen so many!  In both Lisbon and Porto, there seemed to be one everywhere I looked.  I’ve previously written about my favourite albufarrista in Porto, Livraria Moreira da Costa.

Livraria Moreira da Costa in Porto.  

I’ve since been informed by a Portuguese friend via Instagram that book publishing was an expensive undertaking in times past, and subject to heavy censorship for much of the 20th century while Portugal groaned under the Salazar dictatorship.  As a result, most people could only afford to buy secondhand books.  If anyone has another explanation, I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

The Leal Senado building in Macau isn’t quite as iconic as the ruins of the church of São Paulo, but it comes close.  The square in front of it is perhaps more famous.

  Senado Square in Macau as seen from a window on the upper floor of the Leal Senado building, 2014.

The building itself is a handsome Portuguese baroque-style edifice.  Nowadays a busy thoroughfare runs directly in front of it, which you have to cross to get to the square, and vice-versa.

The Basilica da Estrela with its elegant white façade is my favourite church in Lisbon — no small compliment in a city that fancies itself a second Rome.

The façade of the Basilica da Estrela in western Lisbon with tram #28 at bottom right.

If you’re starting from central Lisbon, it’s quite easy to find.  Just get on the famous #28 tram, heading westwards.  The terminal stop is right in front of the Basilica, as you can see in the photo above.

The Chapel was the last major component of the Château to be completed.

Louis XIV had been planning a grand new chapel in the late 1680s when the War of the League of Augsburg (1688-1697), also known as the Nine Years’ War, broke out.  The plans for the Chapel were then shelved.

The Chapel of the Château de Versailles as seen from a street in the town.

When the planning resumed after the end of the war, the King had changed his mind about a crucial point of the design: instead of marble, the white stone known as banc royal would be used for the interior.

The Rue du Bac is a narrow but fascinating street in Paris to wander along.  Lined with antique shops, boutiques, restaurants, and cafes, it stretches from the quai opposite the Louvre deep into the heart of the Left Bank.

Rue du Bac in Paris.

It’s also home to the Paris Foreign Missions Society, usually abbreviated as MEP using the French initials (Missions Étrangères de Paris).  The unassuming street entrance to the MEP complex is shown below.

The entrance to the MEP complex at 128 Rue du Bac.

This venerable organization, still active today, was responsible for the Catholic evangelization of North America and much of East and Southeast Asia.

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.

Wandering in Porto last spring, I came across this antiquarian bookshop, Livraria Moreira da Costa.  As the sign says, it was founded in 1902.

Livraria Moreira da Costa, an antiquarian bookshop in Porto.

I can’t resist any kind of bookshop, but especially not a secondhand one, and certainly not an antiquarian one.  As I discovered on closer inspection of the shop window, Moreira da Costa is in fact the last-named kind of bookshop.

Antiquarian titles in the window of Moreira da Costa.

Germany as we know it today did not exist in the Versailles Century (1682-1789).  The second German Empire (1871-1918), which brought the various German states together into the single national structure that we now call Germany, did not come into being until many decades after the final departure of Louis XVI and his family from Versailles in October, 1789.

In the Versailles Century, Germany was more a geographical region than a country.  It was part of the Holy Roman Empire, which also included the territory of the countries that we now know as Belgium, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Slovenia, as well as parts of present day France, Italy, and Poland.

Here is a map of the Empire in 1789:

The Holy Roman Empire in 1789. Credit: Wikipedia.

By this time, the Emperor had little authority outside his own hereditary territories.  As Voltaire quipped, the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor even a real empire.

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.