Living Out of a Suitcase: Palacial

There are times when I’m strolling through palaces and castles and I look around at all the gold, silver, tapestries and millions of dollars in art and I think, “No wonder they hated you.” At the Palace of Versailles, I found myself saying this. A lot. Except, I said, “No wonder you people lost your head.”

Versailles is just outside of Paris located in a small town that I bet now is known only for the palace. It’s most famous for being the home of French King Louis XIV and his grandson Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette.

One of the Louises.

Way more interesting for me was the Hall of Mirrors, which was used by Louis XV and XVI as family apartments and ballrooms. It’s pretty impressive.

"The principal feature of this famous hall is the seventeen mirror-clad arches that reflect the seventeen arcaded windows that overlook the gardens. Each arch contains twenty-one mirrors with a total complement of 357 used in the decoration of the galerie des glaces. The arches themselves are fixed between marble pilasters whose capitals depict the symbols of France" [Source]

But what makes the Hall even more spectacular is that it is the site of most beautiful piece of historical symmetry I've ever known. In 1871, it was the site of the proclamation of the German Empire after the Germans trounced the French in the Franco-Prussian War. Less than a century later, in 1919, that very same Hall was the site of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, which decimated Germany, forcing it to pay millions in war reparations and crippling its military. The sense of history and ceremony in the room was so thick it was almost palpable.

The rest of the palace is pretty stellar too. There’s Marie Antoinette’s rooms and the rooms of her children. The private quarters ofLouis XIV, aka the Sun King, complete with wall to wall upholstery and priceless paintings. Then there are the fun things like their beds, their toys and the secret doors that they used to escape the mad mob calling for their heads. But after checking out the furnishings I can understand their anger.