Friday, June 15, 2007

Versailles

We went to Versailles Wednesday night - Thursday! We had a very late dinner, but our hotel was only one block from the Palace of Versailles, so I woke up early to see a few pictures. Speaking of my hotel though, it was very tiny!















There are beautiful statues and iron work. It is difficult to describe how ornate everything is. It seems as though everything is beautiful here...



















About the Château de Versailles (from Wikipedia): When the château was built, Versailles was a country village, but it is now a suburb of Paris. From 1682, when King Louis XIV moved from Paris, until the royal family was forced to return to the capital in 1789', the Court of Versailles was the center of power in Ancien Régime France.

In 1660, royal powers from the advisors who had governed France during his minority, was casting about for a site near Paris but away from the tumults and diseases of the crowded city. He had grown up in the disorders of the civil war between rival factions of aristocrats called the Fronde and wanted a site where he could organize and completely control a government of France by absolute personal rule. He settled on the royal hunting lodge at Versailles, and over the following decades had it expanded into the largest palace in the world. Versailles is famous not only as a building, but as a symbol of the system of absolute monarchy which Louis XIV espoused.

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