BY BEN ANTAO

The writer marvells at the historical sites of Versailles on a trip to the region.

WHAT attracted me to Versailles, more than anything else, was the opportunity to see its fabled gardens. So we decided to fly to Paris a couple of days prior to joining the group, to soak ourselves in art at the Louvre as well as to check out the grand Museum-Palace of Louis XIV (1638-1715). The female attendant at the hotel desk fished out a Metro map of Paris from under the counter, circled a section called Bercy village, told us to take the train at Cour St-Émilion station (about five minutes’ walk from the hotel), get off at Bibliothèque F. Mitterrand, change to another line called the C route, and buy a round-trip ticket (€5.80) for Versailles-Rive Gauche (Château de Versailles). Versailles is about 13 miles southwest of Paris.
“About thirty-five minutes,” she said.

ADVENTURE

THUS began our adventure to ride the Paris subway system, with five different routes compared to only two in Toronto. At Bibliothèque, we took the up escalator and began to look around as there was no ticket booth anywhere in sight. Marinella asked a young guy where we could purchase tickets for Versailles. A Frenchman who obviously didn’t speak English, he seemed eager to help and suggested that we buy tickets first at one of the vending machines in the concourse. The display chart on the machine indicated a fare of €11.60 for the return ticket, which I felt was too much. I said it should be €5.80. The man then asked us to follow him to another area where there was a ticket booth. Upon inquiry, he told us to go to another machine and try there. When we got the tickets, he pointed us towards the platform where the train to Versailles would arrive in about ten minutes. We thanked him gratefully and waited for the right train as there was another one with Versailles Chantiers as the terminus.

MUSEUM-PALACE

RELIEVED to finally get on the right train, we sat on the upper deck and I began to check the names of the stations with those on the map at each stop. Across from the Château de Versailles station, we learned there was a boutique where tourists could buy tickets to the museum, thus avoiding long lineups at the château itself. We paid €13.50 each and I also purchased a guide to Versailles in English for €17. The sun peeked out through cloudy patches, with the temperature about 24C. We had a snack and ice cream before walking for some ten minutes to the palace.

Even before entering the Museum-Palace, just crossing the street towards the high-mounted equestrian bronze statue of Louis XIV (5.5 metres in height), one is filled with awe by the sheer expanse of the courtyard, the vastness and scale of this historic site visited every year by over three million people. We were given audio phones with commentaries to guide us through the tour of the Royal Chapel, the Royal Opera, the State Apartments (Grands Appartements), The Hall of Mirrors (Galerie des Glaces), the Gallery of the Battles, the Queen’s Apartments, and the King’s Apartments among the many rooms and salons in this palace.

The vestibule on the ground floor of the Royal Chapel decorated with massive marble Ionic columns shows at the far wall a striking bas-relief, by sculptors Nicolas and Guillaume Coustou, of Louis XIV Crossing the Rhine. The chapel inside is awesome, with a baroque gilded high altar and splendid frescoes on the ceiling supported by elegantly grooved Corinthian columns. I held my breath imagining the sumptuousness to come.

The salons in the Apartments are named after the Greek gods and goddesses. In the salon of Hercules, we gazed at the immense ceiling (315 square metres) with beautiful paintings by François Lemoyne, the artist reportedly worked for three years decorating this ceiling until, worn out and exhausted, he took his life. The work depicting the Apotheosis of Hercules with more than 140 figures represents the gods of Olympus. From the summit of a cloud Jupiter is seen receiving Hercules with club in his grasp and presenting him with Hebe, the goddess of youth, as his bride. The other goddesses are Diana with the crescent moon, Venus, and Cupids, the gods of erotic love. The room features striking red marble pilasters with capitals in gilded bronze. Over the fireplace is a painting Eleazer and Rebecca by Veronese and another by the same painter Simon the Pharisee, a gift of the Venetian Republic in 1664, which covers the entire wall. Louis XIV was said to have greatly admired Veronese and Titian, the Italian Renaissance painters.

SALON CEILING

ON the ceiling of the salon of Venus is a painting Venus Crowned by the Graces by Rene Antoine Houasse (1645-1710), a pupil of Charles Le Brun, a dominant French painter of the 17C whose baroque works are also displayed in Versailles. The goddess of love is shown showering garlands of flowers at the gods at her feet — Mars, Vulcan, Bacchus, Neptune and Jupiter. On another side is a wainscoted wall with a gilded wood emblem of the sun representing the power of the king and the royal sceptre and the hand of justice. It was easy to imagine, with the ostentatious lifestyles of the French monarchs, how and why Louis XIV could see himself as the sun king. There is a statue of Louis XIV dressed as an ancient Roman with attributes of war, with shield, helmet and cuirass, leaning on the staff of command.

In the salon of Diana is a marble bust of Louis XIV by Bernini when the king was about 27 years old. There are several beautiful paintings in this salon, which was used as a billiard room, a game the sun king was said to be good at. In the salon of Mars are fine paintings by the great masters. Above the fireplace is King David by Domenichino; to the left, the Family of Darius by Le Brun; to the right, the Pilgrims of Emmaus by Veronese; on the right wall are Louis XV in War by Carl Van Loo, and across from it, Maria Leszczynska in Court Dress wearing the crown jewels, also by Van Loo. On the ceiling of the salon of Mercury is Mercury on a Chariot Drawn by Roosters by Jean Baptiste de Champaigne (1631-1681). In the salon of Apollo is a majestic portrait of Louis XIV painted by Rigaud in 1703.

The salons named after the planets show off the allegorical paintings on their ceilings, truly in the style of Louis XIV. Moving from room to room, one is awed by the opulence of the king, his zest and lust for living, truly a French dream.

There is more to this French dream — a magnificent Hall of Mirrors designed to enchant any visitor. For a best description of this gallery, one has to view its photo; words are inadequate. Still, for the sake of record, I’d like to add the following details from the guide book:

This gallery is 73 metres long, 10.5 metres wide and 12.3 metres high. Work on its construction began in 1689 and lasted ten years. The seventeen arched windows overlooking the garden are matched by the same number of simulated windows decorated with panel mirrors with bevelled sides and framed in chased gilt brass. Four of the doors communicate with the king’s apartments. The spaces between the windows are scanned by engaged pilasters in red-brown marble of Rance with bases in chased gilded bronze and capitals invented specially for this gallery by Caffieri.

The frieze of the gilded stucco cornice is decorated with the emblems of the royal orders of St. Michael and the Holy Ghost. There are chandeliers in Bohemian crystal, the 24 torches from the time of Louis XV, the consoles in gilded wood with marble tray tops, the porphyry vases, the antique busts, all immersed in a fantastic world that transcends the man for whom it was built, Louis XIV, and the artists who worked there, a world to the glory and fame of all France.

The Hall of Mirrors was decorated by Le Brun. On June 28, 1919, the Treaty of Versailles ending World War I was signed in this gallery.

Another gallery that overwhelms the eye is the Gallery of the Battles, 120 metres long, inaugurated in 1837 to house the paintings commemorating the glories of the French armies from the first tribes to the Grenadiers of Napoleon’s Guard. An engraved plaque gives the visitor the meaning of this gallery:

The busts in this gallery
Are those of the princes of royal blood,
Of the admirals, of the constables,
Of the marshals of France
And of the famous warriors
Who fell in battle for France.

Fourteen centuries of French history are covered in paintings, with 82 marble busts of famous military leaders along the walls and Corinthian columns in the centre of the gallery. Scenes from the battles (Poitiers, 732, Bouvines, 1214, Taillebourg, 1242, Marignan, 1515, Rocroy, 1643, Fleurus, 1794, Rivoli, 1797, Austerlitz, 1805, Iena, 1806, Friedland, 1807, and Wagram, 1809) are painted in rich colours in Renaissance and Romantic styles, exuding much nationalistic fervour, on huge canvases (about four feet wide by 3.5 feet high) that decorate the walls of this gallery.

As with the Hall of Mirrors, this gallery needs to be viewed in person to appreciate the full vitality of the artists’ talents.

The King’s and the Queen’s Apartments are distinguished by their lush furnishings and tapestries, the rich textiles used for the king’s and queen’s beds with canopies of ostrich feathers and plumes. The colors gold and red dominate most of the rooms.

LUSH GARDENS

AFTER three hours we came out to view the famous gardens. It was four-thirty in the afternoon, the sun clouded as we stood at the parapet to gaze down the neatly manicured gardens below, white flower-beds amidst low green hedges elaborately laid out in geometric patterns to lend an arabesque perspective to the scene. The gardens with a large pool in the centre and stretched over a generous area not only looked photogenic but begged to be photographed. The fountain in the pool was dormant.

Walking westward, we stopped to admire the basin of Latona and the white marble sculpture Latona and her Children by Balthasar Marsy set up on a rock. According to the Roman myth, Latona gave birth to two children, Apollo and Diana, in the shade of an olive tree. One day she asked some peasants for a drink of water to quench her thirst. When they refused she asked Jupiter who loved her to avenge the insult and he transformed the insolent peasants into frogs. The sculpture facing towards the Grand Canal sits upon a fountain decorated at various levels with frogs, turtles and figures of bronze, with 50 jets of water animating the composition. Simply stunning!

Tired as we were, we did not have the energy to look at many other statues, fountains, pools and shrubbery covering 100 hectares from the castle for three kilometres to the mile-long Grand Canal. The scale of the gardens is a fit tribute to the taste and style of Louis XIV and his fantasy. Although the layout of the gardens is picturesque, I must say I was a bit disappointed for the lack of fragrant flowers. Perhaps I was expecting my senses to be intoxicated as I’d been in the Butchart Gardens near Victoria, B.C, Canada, where 130 varieties of roses had made me giddy with their strong fragrances. Still, the Gardens of Versailles look magnificent in the photographs we took, a medium known to transform even the unappealing into beautiful.

The above essay is from the author’s travelogue Tour de France. Ben Antao, who lives in Toronto, Canada, is a journalist and novelist whose last novel is titled ‘The Priest and His Karma’ published by Publish America of Baltimore, MD in 2009. His email: ben.antao@rogers.com