Sunday 30 May 1999. The coach set off at 9:00am for Versailles and although warm, it was rather dull. By the time we reached the palace it was obvious that a storm was in the offing.
None-the-less we left the coach - no choice actually as it was not stopping in the coach park at the palace - and we walked into the huge cobbled courtyard and joined a horrendously long line of people waiting to go into the palace itself. The people on the right are somewhere near the back of the queue and the front of it is between the two wings on the right.
It was going darker and darker and I left Fran in the queue and went to see if there was another way in. There wasn't. On the way back I photographed the statue of Louis XIV and the sky gives you some idea. It was to get darker however. As I got back to Fran I was surprised to see she had moved up the line quite a way. The more nervous were bailing out and heading for the cafe and toilets! A few drops of rain fell - I notice these things, being bald...
Hardly had the rain started than it suddenly got a lot darker. The automatic sensors assumed it was night and the floodlighting came on. There was a test flash of lightning and it was successful so there came a lot more... Suddenly it stopped raining and instead the air turned to water. At least that's what it felt like. I've been in Florida thunderstorms which I thought were bad but this was unbelievable. In no time at all everyone was soaked through to the skin with icy water whilst thunder and lightning were horrendously close. I'll show you the scorch marks later... The cafe and shop closed its doors as there were so many people fighting to get in they were in danger of suffocating. People were literally screaming - the air was so full of water that you could hardly breathe or see.
The gutters and drains of Versailles are wonderful. Water is collected off the roofs and pours out the mouths of gargoyles. Beautiful in a shower, but in this storm the people in the narrow space between the two wings of the building were subjected to the equivalent of a row of fire hoses directed onto them from the rooftop. It was ten minutes before another door was opened and by then the mass of people was so compacted as we huddled together that we were just swept into the building. In no time the floor of the foyer was awash as all you had to do was grip a bit of clothing and water would gush forth.
It took a long time to get tickets to go into the palace proper as by then the foyer was choked with people wandering aimlessly and dripping in several different languages. The caissier had given over asking and was simply ringing up the till and pointing at the displayed price. My glasses were misted over - I took out my handkerchief and added some water... Having got the tickets we squelched up the staircase and decided the jackets we were carrying were simply making our arms wetter. We stuffed them in a plastic carrier bag and forgot about them.
When the Revolution emptied the palace of its inhabitants and showed them what a good time you could have in a condemned cell, all the furniture was being taken out and auctioned off until it was realised what was happening and what remained was left alone. Consequently many of the rooms are empty of furniture. Some contain paintings and some contain odd items. The decor though in all rooms is stunning. Gilding is in evidence throughout and there are some wonderful ceiling paintings and mouldings.
Some national stereotypes were emerging. The French were standing, dripping and sullen. The Germans were all organised and taking coats off, folding them and putting them into bags. The Brits were taking shoes off and tipping them up to literally pour a stream of water out, shouting to their mates: "Ha ha ha! Look at this!!!" A peep though a window showed that the rain had almost stopped and certainly the storm had passed over. We were later told that Paris had never had such a storm. As I said - I'll show you the scorch marks later...
It must have been heartbreaking for the staff and custodians as almost everywhere the exquisitely tiled floors were just full of water from people's feet. They were lucky the floors weren't carpeted. Meanwhile back to just before the Revolution, Paris could be dangerous and the chateau at Versailles was far enough away to have warning of any mobs but not so far as to be unaware and unable to send troops. Besides, Louis' court lived there also and thus he had them under his direct control. From 1682 to 1789 Versailles was the home of the kings of France. Everything had been built especially for Louis XIV: the palace itself, the town to house the builders and the tradesmen who served and fed them, the gardens, the water supplies, and a large hunting park. There was only a couple of villages full of peasants who had to be ejected before work could start...
The hunting park is no longer part of the estate but even so there are 800 hectares of land, 20km of roads, 200,000 trees, 35km of canals, 2153 windows, 700 rooms and 67 staircases... We had no time to go through all the rooms and the ones that we did see we saw only briefly, taking a quick glance, a photo and moving on, leaving a little puddle of water if we paused too long... Happily, water is a distinct feature of Versailles and the fountains in the garden are absolutely beautiful. We shall see some of them later, but the fountains are only switched on for a limited time and for most of that time we were indoors...
Carrying on our trip around the Palace of Versailles we complete one wing of the building and find ourselves back looking through the doorway at the beautiful Royal Chapel. Whilst the rain had stopped, as you can tell from the trousers of the chap on the left, we were still all very wet! I was relieved to find my cameras were ok. Later when Fran checked her bag, we found that any paper in it had tended to fall apart - like money for instance... I checked my pockets and brought out a few soggy scraps of paper myself - money and tickets to the garden... They had just disintegrated and there were just lots of half-inch tatters of paper!
Louis XIV's clock of 1706 in the Mercury Drawing Room. On the hour, animated figures of the King and of Fame descend from a cloud. The room was the State Bedchamber in 1682 and now contains the bed that Louis-Philippe had made for the bedchamber of Louis XIV when Versailles opened as a museum.
The Hall of Mirrors connects the War Drawing Room and the Peace Drawing Room, all devoted to the victories of Louis XIV. It was decorated from 1678 to 1686 and it was here that courtiers would wait, hoping for the ear of the King as he passed through on his way to morning worship in the Chapel. The room was spectacular to say the least and it was easy to visualise the masked and full dress balls that were held within these mirrored walls.
One of the candelabra from the Hall of Mirrors. M'sieur Vallaire had told us that there were no bathrooms or toilets in the palace. Certainly, they didn't wash as much as modern folk, believing that too much washing destroyed the body's natural resistance to disease. He also said, Napolean liked a bit of smell and always sent a messenger home two weeks in advance to warn Josephine not to wash! Perhaps that's the real reason for "Not tonight, Josephine!"
This is one of gallery rooms, hung with massive paintings, thronging with saturated tourists. The paintings depicted Napolean and someone had carelessly left a dirty great column standing in the middle of the room. Not mentioned in the guide book, I can only suppose that in a state of excitement someone put it down and forgot to pick it up again...
This gorgeous room was Queen Marie-Antoinette's bedchamber. It was here that the queen gave birth publicly so that there could be no doubt as to the true identity of the heir to the throne. In her memoirs, Madame Campan, First Woman of the Bedchamber described a huge crowd rushing into the room to witness the Queen give birth, actually climbing on the furniture for a better look. The King and Queen each had their own apartments, decorated similarly.
Ok folks, we are about to go into some very soggy grounds and gardens. The lightning scorch mark is somewhere outside - you may want some time to prepare yourselves...
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