Hall of Mirrors

The Palace of Versailles ( vair-SY, vur-SY; French: château de Versailles [ʃɑto d(ə) vɛʁsɑj] ) is a former royal residence commissioned by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, about 19 kilometers (12 mi) west of Paris, France. The palace is owned by the French Republic and since 1995 has been managed, under the direction of the French Ministry of Culture, by the Public Establishment of the Palace, Museum and National Estate of Versailles. About 15,000,000 people visit the palace, park, or gardens of Versailles every year, making it one of the most popular tourist attractions in the world.Louis XIII built a simple hunting lodge on the site of the Palace of Versailles in 1623. With his death came Louis XIV who expanded the château into the beginnings of a palace that went through several changes and phases from 1661 to 1715. It was a favorite residence for both kings, and in 1682, Louis XIV moved the seat of his court and government to Versailles, making the palace the de facto capital of France. This state of affairs was continued by Kings Louis XV and Louis XVI, who primarily made interior alterations to the palace, but in 1789 the royal family and capital of France returned to Paris. For the rest of the French Revolution, the Palace of Versailles was largely abandoned and emptied of its contents, and the population of the surrounding city plummeted. Napoleon, following his coronation as Emperor, used Versailles as a summer residence from 1810 to 1814, but did not restore it. Following the Bourbon Restoration, when the king was returned to the throne, he resided in Paris and it was not until the 1830s that meaningful repairs were made to the palace. A museum of French history was installed within it, replacing the apartments of the southern wing. The palace and park were designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1979 for its importance as the center of power, art, and science in France during the 17th and 18th centuries. The French Ministry of Culture has placed the palace, its gardens, and some of its subsidiary structures on its list of culturally significant monuments.

The 8th G7 Summit was held in Versailles, France from 4 to 6 June 1982. The venue for the summit meetings was at the Palace of Versailles. The Group of Seven (G7) was an unofficial forum which brought together the heads of the richest industrialized countries: France, West Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada (since 1976), and the President of the European Commission (starting officially in 1981). The summits were not meant to be linked formally with wider international institutions; and in fact, a mild rebellion against the stiff formality of other international meetings was a part of the genesis of cooperation between France's president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and West Germany's chancellor Helmut Schmidt as they conceived the first Group of Six (G6) summit in 1975.

The grande commande was a commission ordered by Louis XIV for statues intended to decorate the parterre d’eau of the gardens of the Palace of Versailles, as initially conceived in 1672. The commission, which included 24 statues and four groups, was ordered in 1674. Designed by Charles Le Brun from Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia, the statues were executed by the foremost sculptors of the day (Blunt, 1980; Friedman, 1988, 1993; Nolhac, 1913; Thompson, 2006; Verlet, 1985). Owing to concerns of the effects of the vertical lines of the statues in relations to the garden façade of the château, the statues of the grande commande were transferred to other locations in the gardens in 1684 (Berger, 1985; Blunt, 1980; Friedman, 1988, 1993; Marie, 1968; Nolhac, 1901, 1913; Thompson, 2006; Verlet, 1985; Weber, 1993). The 24 statues were personifications of the classic quaternities: The four groupings represented the four classic Abductions: The Four Abductions:Persephone by Pluto Cybele by Saturn Orethyia by Boreas Coronis by Neptune

The appartement du roi or King's Apartment is the suite of rooms in the Palace of Versailles that served as the living quarters of Louis XIV. Overlooking the Marble Court (cour de marbre), these rooms are situated in the oldest part of the chateau in rooms originally designated for use by the queen in Louis XIII's chateau. Owing largely to the discomfort of the grand appartement du roi and to the construction of the Hall of Mirrors, Louis XIV began to remodel these rooms for his use shortly after the death of Maria Theresa in 1684. The appartement du roi evolved to become the everyday working quarters for Louis XV and Louis XVI. Initially, the appartement du roi consisted of a suite of eight rooms that issued from the Queen's Staircase (escalier de la reine). The number was reduced to seven after 1701 and to six in 1755.

Around 2:30 am on Monday, 26 June 1978, the historic Palace of Versailles near Paris, France, was bombed by Breton nationalists belonging to the Breton Liberation Front (FLB). The powerful explosion occurred on the ground floor of the left wing of the palace and caused damage within an 80 meter radius. Many statues and priceless paintings were damaged, including an entire gallery and several pieces of Napoleonic art, and a wide hole was opened in the ceiling. The bomb caused millions of francs in damage. The Hall of Mirrors, opera house and chapel were undamaged. One night guard was wounded.

The petit appartement de la reine (French: [pɛˈtit‿apaʁtəˈmɑ̃dəlaʁɛn]) is a suite of rooms in the Palace of Versailles. These rooms, situated behind the grand appartement de la reine, and which now open onto two interior courtyards, were the private domain of the Queens of France, Maria Theresa of Spain, Marie Leszczyńska, and Marie-Antoinette, as well as of the duchesse de Bourgogne as dauphine. The rooms in the petit appartement de la reine have been restored to the condition in which they were left when Marie-Antoinette left Versailles on 6 October 1789, and while the rooms are mostly Louis XVI style, some parts are Louis XV style, or Rococo, like the fireplace mantel found in the supplément de la bibliothèque, or the centre table in the cabinet de la Méridienne, as well as the mantel clock in the billiard room.

The petit appartement du roi (French: [pɛˈtit‿apaʁtəˈmɑ̃dyʁwa]) of the Palace of Versailles is a suite of rooms used by Louis XIV, Louis XV, and Louis XVI. Located on the first floor of the palace, the rooms are found in the oldest part of the palace dating from the reign of Louis XIII. Under Louis XIV, these rooms housed the king's collections of artworks and books, forming a museum of sorts. Under Louis XV and Louis XVI, the rooms were modified to accommodate private living quarters. At this time, the rooms were transformed and their decoration represent some of the finest extant examples of the Louis XV style and Louis XVI style at Versailles (Kimball, 1943).

The Galerie des Batailles (French: [ɡalʁi de bataj]; English: "Gallery of Battles") is a gallery occupying the first floor of the Aile du Midi of the Palace of Versailles, joining onto the grand and petit appartement de la reine. 120 m (390 ft) long and 13 m (43 ft) wide, it is an epigone of the grand gallery of the Louvre and was intended to glorify French military history from the Battle of Tolbiac (traditionally dated 496) to the Battle of Wagram (5–6 July 1809).

The Salon d'Hercule (French pronunciation: [salɔ̃ dɛʁkyl]; also known as the Hercules Salon or the Hercules Drawing Room) is on the first floor of the Château de Versailles and connects the Royal Chapel in the North Wing of the château with the grand appartement du roi.

The Musée de l'Histoire de France (Museum of French History) is a museum that was created by King Louis Philippe I in the Palace of Versailles and opened in 1837. At the time, it represented an ambitious project of national reconciliation between the hitherto competing narratives of the French monarchy and the French Revolution, to which Louis-Philippe devoted significant personal attention. Whereas it gradually faded in importance as a museum in the later 19th century, its lavish historicist decoration remains a major exemplar of the art of France's July Monarchy.

The present chapel of the Palace of Versailles is the fifth in the history of the palace. These chapels evolved with the expansion of the château and formed the focal point of the daily life of the court during the Ancien Régime (Bluche, 1986, 1991; Petitfils, 1995; Solnon, 1987).

The Royal Gate of the Palace of Versailles separates the Cour d'Honneur from the Royal Court of the Palace of Versailles. It is also located between the Pavillon Dufour (on the left as you enter), built under Louis XVIII and currently used to welcome visitors to the château, and the Gabriel wing (on the right), whose construction began in 1772, but which was not completed until 1985. The Royal Gate was destroyed in 1794, during the French Revolution. It marked the castle's outskirts at the end of the 17th century for less than a century before reappearing in a new version in 2008. Although considered restitution by its architect Fréderic Didier, art historians have criticized this initiative.