A city of north-central France west-southwest of Paris. It is best known for its magnificent palace, built by Louis XIV in the mid-17th century, where the treaty ending World War I was signed in 1919. Population: 86,400.
Versailles
Dictionary:
Ver·sailles (vər-sī', vĕr-)  |
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| French Literature Companion: Versailles |
A hunting-lodge and then a modest château in the reign of Louis XIII, Versailles became one of the main interests of the young Louis XIV soon after he began to rule in 1661. The work was to last for 42 years and cost 82 million livers. The first stage was to enlarge Versailles in order to make an appropriate setting for court festivals, notably the Plaisirs de l'Île Enchantée (1664). The gardens (designed by Le Nôtre), the fountains, and the statues were an essential part of the project. The next stage, the work of Le Vau, was to surround the original chateau with a U-shaped palace, the famous enveloppe (1668-74). What rendered this magnificent palace out of date almost as soon as it was finished was the king's decision to live there (together with his court and administration) on a more or less permanent basis. Jules Hardouin-Mansart, therefore, added two more floors to the palace, as well as designing the great Galerie des Glaces to accommodate Lebrun's paintings of the king's most famous deeds. It was this third Versailles, inaugurated in 1682, which accommodated the king's everyday life, while Marly (constructed from 1679 onwards) became his new palace of pleasure. Versailles, which was already becoming a tourist attraction, continued to house the royal administration and the court until the Revolution.
[Peter Burke]
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Versailles |
Versailles (vərsī', Fr. vĕrsī'), city (1990 pop. 91,029), capital of Yvelines dept., N central France. It was an insignificant rural hamlet when Louis XIII constructed a small retreat there in 1623. The village was soon made famous by Louis XIV, who expanded his father's work and built (mid-17th cent.) the palace and grounds that have become synonymous with the name Versailles. The growth of the town began in 1682, when Louis moved his court there. The huge structure, representing French classical style at its height, was the work of Louis Le Vau, J. H. Mansart, and Charles Le Brun. André Le Nôtre laid out the park and gardens, which are decorated with fountains, reservoirs, and sculptures by such artists as Antoine Coysevox. A huge machine was built at Marly-le-Roi to supply water for the fountains. The park contains two smaller palaces, the Grand Trianon and the Petit Trianon, as well as numerous temples, grottoes, and other decorative structures.
The scene of the beginnings of the French Revolution, Versailles never again became a royal residence (the Tuileries in Paris replaced it in this function); under Louis Philippe it became a national monument and museum. The palace was the scene of the proclamation of the German Empire (1871) and of the Third French Republic. Several important treaties were signed at Versailles, most notably the 1919 treaty ending World War I and establishing the League of Nations. Today Versailles is one of the greatest tourist centers in France. The palace serves as a residence for visiting foreign leaders. It was the site of a bombing by separatists in 1978, when one wing was damaged. The city has some industry, such as distilling and market gardening. It is a garrison town, with a military hospital and military schools.
Bibliography
See T. Spawforth, Versailles: A Biography of a Palace (2008).
| History 1450-1789: Versailles |
The seat of the French monarchy from 1682 to 1789, Louis XIV's chateau at Versailles had its origins in a modest hunting lodge built in 1623 for his father, Louis XIII. When Louis XIV (ruled 1643–1715) assumed personal control of the government in 1661, he embarked upon a building program at the site that continued almost unabated until his death. Versailles was first an intimate retreat for the king and then a royal residence for a still itinerant court before it became the permanent seat of the French royal family, court, and government in 1682. Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619–1683), Louis XIV's indefatigable finance minister, was responsible for procuring the staggering sums needed to build the chateau that became the model for royal palaces across Europe.
Architectural History
Louis XIV's magnificent chateau evolved in three major phases. The Sun King first intended Versailles to be a retreat from the responsibilities of government. Between 1661 and 1668, the architect Louis Le Vau (1612–1670), the gardener AndréLe Nôtre (1613–1700), and the painter Charles Le Brun (1619–1690) collaborated to create a palace suitable for the Sun King to entertain favored courtiers. When Louis XIV decided in 1668 that Versailles was to become a royal residence, able to house his full court for months at a time, he ordered extensive additions. Le Vau drew up plans to frame the Old Chateau in a terraced "envelope" of white stone. The envelope included state apartments for the king and queen, the salons of which were each dedicated to one of the seven planets known to orbit the sun. The king's own bedchamber, echoing the theme articulated in the chateau's gardens, depicted scenes from the myth of Apollo.
Work on the chateau and its gardens was by no means complete when Louis XIV permanently installed his family, court, and government at Versailles in 1682. Jules Hardouin-Mansart (1646–1708) oversaw the final enlargement of the palace and adjacent buildings that would eventually house five thousand courtiers and as many government officials, guards, and servants. It was Mansart who designed the legendary Hall of Mirrors. Running almost the entire length of the chateau's western facade, the gallery was sheathed in mirrors, furnished with solid silver chandeliers, and crowned by ceiling panels by Le Brun that depicted pivotal episodes from the Sun King's life. Meanwhile, Le Nôtre continued to expand the gardens, adding grottoes, ornamental lakes, and a Grand Canal so vast the navy could perform maneuvers on it. Construction on Louis XIV's palace ceased only with the completion of the Chapel Royal in 1710.
The exterior of Versailles changed little over the course of the eighteenth century. Louis XV (ruled 1715–1774) came to loathe his great-grandfather's formal palace and added little to it. Although he commissioned the Royal Opera designed by Jacques-Ange Gabriel (1698–1782), he was far more interested in increasing the privacy of his own apartments. Louis XVI (ruled 1774–1792), the last of the Bourbons to rule at Versailles, also concentrated on interior renovations. His queen, Marie Antoinette (1755–1793), concerned herself with the Petit Trianon, a bucolic palace on the grounds of Versailles. After a revolutionary crowd triumphantly carried the ill-fated king and his family back to Paris in 1789, the chateau fell empty. The history of Versailles as the residence of the French kings officially ended in 1837, when Louis-Philippe declared that the royal chateau was to become a museum celebrating "all of France's glories."
Town of Versailles
The fortunes of the town of Versailles waxed and waned with the presence of the court. Louis XIV razed the original village to make room for his chateau's grand avenues and parks. He rebuilt the town on a new site, decreed that it was to become "the most frequented and flourishing in the world," and strictly regulated even the colors of building materials and decorations for its houses. With the court in permanent residence, Versailles became the administrative capital of France, the seat of all branches of government except the judicial. By the end of the seventeenth century, the town's population—swelled by those whose occupations or interests brought them to court—stood at over 30,000, and its inns could house hundreds more. With the death of Louis XIV in 1715, the court departed for Paris, and Versailles soon became a ghost town. It enjoyed a revival after 1722, when Louis XV returned to his great-grandfather's palace. Versailles lost its position as the administrative capital permanently in 1789 with the forced departure of Louis XVI for Paris.
Noble Life At Court
For many years, Versailles was seen as a gilded theater upon whose stage an all-powerful absolute monarch entertained a captive audience of domesticated aristocrats. Recent research has shown, however, that Louis XIV could not arbitrarily dominate his subjects. His rule was limited by the fundamental laws of the realm, tradition, and the practical difficulties of enforcing his will on an extended country of twenty million people. Furthermore, without a police force or a standing army, the king relied upon his noble subjects to ensure order in the kingdom. Louis XIV's reign was consequently marked by cooperation with, rather than control over, the aristocracy. Similarly, the court of Versailles was a site of mutually satisfactory exchange between king and nobility. The king required the great nobles to attend court because he sought to ensure their loyalty. They came because they considered it their right and privilege and because they received social and material rewards for doing so.
The vast majority of the French nobility did not live at Versailles. Only the grands, the highest-ranking French nobles, were in residence. Even at the peak of noble attendance, the ten thousand court nobles represented only 5 percent of the hereditary nobility. Attendance was on a system of quarters that entailed residences of three months, twice a year. The privileged among this number were granted rooms within the chateau itself (which contained 220 apartments and 450 surprisingly small rooms); the less fortunate lived in the town of Versailles or were forced to travel back and forth to Paris each day. At the palace, the Sun King provided a continuous whirl of ballets, operas, fêtes, plays, and thrice-weekly gambling nights. While Louis XIV prevented members of the hereditary nobility from participating in affairs of state, courtiers did have more to do than attend entertainments, for many held offices in the royal households.
The primary duty of every courtier, however, was to attend the king. Accompanying the king conferred prestige but, even more important, allowed nobles to gain access to royal patronage. To secure the allegiance of his nobility and to prevent anyone else from gaining too much influence and power, Louis XIV distributed all royal patronage personally—no chief minister had control over the treasury, the distribution of estates, or the assignment of lucrative church posts or military commands. Those nobles who did not attend court seldom received any reward. Louis was known to say, when solicited for a favor on behalf of a noble who did not come to Versailles as often as the king liked, "I do not know him."
Louis XIV subjected his courtiers to a strict etiquette that governed their comportment, manners, and dress. This precisely graded code meted out privileges according to a noble's position in the court hierarchy. It determined, for example, who was allowed wear a hat and when, and who could sit in the presence of the royal family. The sociologist Norbert Elias has famously argued that the intricate rules and rituals that governed the members of Louis XIV's court facilitated the creation of the modern centralized state. The ordered society of Versailles became the European ideal of the well-run state.
Louis XIV performed the role of sacred kingship like an actor who never broke character. He calibrated his movements, gestures, and expressions at all times. The activities of his day—waking, dressing, socializing, eating—all followed a regimen so exacting that his every gesture took on a ritual status. This ceremonial elevated the status of the monarch at the same time that it limited access to him. The lever, the king's ceremonial awakening, serves as an example. During this daily "kingrise," six strictly designated sets of noblemen entered the royal bedchamber to dress the monarch. The highest-ranking noble present received the greatest privilege, that of handing the king his shirt. Courtiers vied to attend the lever (or its evening counterpart, the coucher) because it provided an opportunity to ask favors of the king. Those excluded could importune the monarch only as he traveled in his ritualized orbit from bedchamber to chapel to council chamber over the course of the day.
Without a monarch dedicated to the public performance of monarchy, the court of Versailles could not function so effectively as an instrument of rule. Through force of personality (and a renowned capacity for hard work), Louis XIV created a court that was simultaneously an irresistible social center for the high nobility and a seat of government for his ministry. This system, however, was largely dependent on the personality and abilities of the ruler. Louis XIV tirelessly performed the rituals of kingship, but neither Louis XV nor Louis XVI was willing to maintain such strict ceremonial. They also proved less able to divert members of the high nobility away from affairs of state or to maintain as effective a control over their ministers and state policies. Over the course of the eighteenth century, the court of Versailles, which had once been a celebration of divinely appointed monarchy, instead came to represent a center of despotism.
Bibliography
Primary Source
Saint-Simon, Louis de Rouvroy, duc de. Historical Memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon: A Shortened Version. Edited and translated by Lucy Norton. 3 vols. New York, 1967.
Secondary Sources
Adamson, John, ed. The Princely Courts of Europe: Ritual, Politics, and Culture under the Ancien Régime, 1500–1750. London, 1999.
Beik, William. Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth-Century France: State Power and Provincial Aristocracy in Languedoc. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 1985.
Damien, André. "Versailles, Capitale?" Revue des sciences morales & politiques 151 (1996): 21–38.
Elias, Norbert. The Court Society. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. New York, 1983.
Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel. Saint-Simon and the Court of Louis XIV. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Chicago, 2001.
Mukerji, Chandra. Territorial Ambitions and the Gardens of Versailles. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 1997.
Newton, William B. L'espace du roi: La cour de France au château de Versailles, 1682–1789. Paris, 2000.
Solnon, Jean-François. La cour de France. Paris, 1987.
—LYNN WOOD MOLLENAUER
| Geography: Versailles |
(ver-seye, vuhr-seye)
City in northern France about ten miles southwest of Paris.
- It is the site of the Palace of Versailles, which was built by King Louis xiv in the seventeenth century and was the royal residence for over one hundred years.
- The French Revolution began in Versailles, when mobs stormed the palace.
- The Treaty of Versailles, signed in 1919, officially ended World War I.
| Wikipedia: Versailles |
This article is about the city of Versailles. For the Château de Versailles, see Palace of Versailles. For other uses, see Versailles (disambiguation).
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Commune of Versailles |
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| Notre-Dame Church | |
| Location | |
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| Location (in red) within the Paris inner and outer suburbs | |
| Coordinates | 48°48′19″N 2°8′6″E / 48.80528°N 2.135°E |
| Administration | |
|---|---|
| Country | France |
| Region | Île-de-France |
| Department | Yvelines |
| Arrondissement | Versailles |
| Intercommunality | Versailles Grand Parc |
| Mayor | François de Mazières (2008–2014) |
| Statistics | |
| Elevation | 103–180 m (340–590 ft) (avg. 132 m/430 ft) |
| Land area1 | 26.18 km2 (10.11 sq mi) |
| Population2 | 89,490 (2006) |
| - Density | 3,418 /km2 (8,850 /sq mi) |
| Miscellaneous | |
| INSEE/Postal code | 78646/ 78000 |
| 1 French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km² (0.386 sq mi or 247 acres) and river estuaries. | |
| 2 Population sans doubles comptes: residents of multiple communes (e.g., students and military personnel) only counted once. | |
Versailles (French pronunciation: [vɛʁsaj]), a city renowned for its château, the Palace of Versailles, was the de facto capital of the kingdom of France for over a century, from 1682 to 1789. It is now a wealthy suburb of Paris and remains an important administrative and judicial center. Located in the western suburbs of the French capital, 17.1 km (10.6 mi) from the center of Paris, the commune of Versailles is the préfecture (administrative seat) of the Yvelines department. According to the 2006 census, the population of the city is 89,490 inhabitants, down from a peak of 94,145 in 1975.
Contents |
Name
There are still doubts about the etymology Versailles, but it seems the name comes from the Latin word versare, meaning "to make more of, to keep on turning a new leaf", and was used in medieval times for plowed lands, cleared lands (lands that had been repeatedly "turned over"). This word formation seems similar to Latin seminare ("to sow") which gave French semailles ("sowings", "sown seeds").
During the Revolution of 1789, city officials had proposed to the Convention to rename Versailles Berceau-de-la-Liberté ("Cradle of Liberty"), but they had to retract their proposal when confronted with the objections of the majority of the population.[1].
A seat of power
Versailles was the unofficial capital city of the kingdom of France from May 1682 (when King Louis XIV moved the court and government permanently to Versailles) until September 1715 (death of Louis XIV and regency, with the regent Philippe d'Orléans returning to Paris), and then again from June 1722 (when Louis XV returned to Versailles permanently) to October 1789 (when Louis XVI was forced to move back to Paris by the people of Paris). During the entire period, Paris remained the official capital city of France, and the official royal palace was the Palace of the Louvre, but in practice government affairs were conducted from Versailles, and Versailles was regarded as the real capital.
Versailles became again the unofficial capital city of France from March 1871 (when the French government took refuge in Versailles due to the insurrection of the Paris Commune) until November 1879 (when the newly elected left-wing republicans relocated the government and parliament to Paris).
Versailles was made the préfecture (capital) of the Seine-et-Oise département at its inception in March 1790 (Seine-et-Oise had approximately 420,000 inhabitants at its creation).[2] By the 1960s, with the growth of the Paris suburbs, the Seine-et-Oise département had reached more than 2 million inhabitants,[2] and was deemed too large and ungovernable, and thus it was split into three départements in January 1968. Versailles was made the préfecture of the Yvelines département, the largest chunk of the former Seine-et-Oise département. At the 2006 census the Yvelines département had 1,395,804 inhabitants.[3]
Versailles is the seat of a Roman Catholic diocese (bishopric) which was created in 1790. The diocese of Versailles is subordinate to the archdiocese of Paris.
In 1975 Versailles was made the seat of a Court of Appeal whose jurisdiction covers the western suburbs of Paris.
Since 1972, Versailles has been the seat of one of France's 30 nationwide académies (districts) of the Ministry of National Education. The académie de Versailles, the largest of France's 30 académies by its number of pupils and students, is in charge of supervising all the elementary schools and high schools of the western suburbs of Paris.
Versailles is also an important node for the French army, a tradition going back to the monarchy, with for instance the military camp of Satory and other institutions.
Geography
Versailles is located 17.1 km (10.6 miles) west-southwest from the center of Paris (as the crow flies). The city sits on an elevated plateau, 130 to 140 metres (425 to 460 ft) above sea-level (whereas the altitude of the center of Paris is only 33 m (108 ft) above sea level), surrounded by wooded hills: in the north the woods of Marly and Fausses-Reposes, and in the south the forests of Satory and Meudon.
The city (commune) of Versailles has an area of 26.18 km² (10.11 sq mi, or 6,469 acres), which is a quarter of the area of the city of Paris. In 1999, the city of Versailles had a population density of 3,344/km² (8,660/sq mi), whereas the city of Paris had a density of 20,696/km² (53,602/sq mi).
Born out of the will of a king, the city has a rational and symmetrical grid of streets. By the standards of the 18th century, Versailles was a very modern European city. Versailles was used as a model for the building of Washington DC by Pierre Charles L'Enfant.[citation needed]
History
The name of Versailles appears for the first time in a medieval document dated A.D. 1038. In the feudal system of medieval France, the lords of Versailles came directly under the king of France, with no intermediary overlords between them and the king; yet they were not very important lords. In the end of the 11th century the village curled around a medieval castle and the Saint Julien church. Its farming activity and its location on the road from Paris to Dreux and Normandy brought prosperity to the village, culminating in the end of the 13th century, the so-called "century of Saint Louis", famous for the prosperity of northern France and the building of gothic cathedrals. The 14th century brought the Black Plague and the Hundred Years' War, and with it death and destruction. At the end of the Hundred Years' War in the 15th century, the village started to recover, with a population of only 100 inhabitants.
In 1561, Martial de Loménie, secretary of state for finances under King Charles IX, became lord of Versailles. He obtained permission to establish four annual fairs and a weekly market on Thursdays. The population of Versailles was 500 inhabitants. Martial de Loménie was murdered during the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre (24 August 1572). In 1575 Albert de Gondi, a man from Florence who had come to France along with Catherine de' Medici, bought the seigneury of Versailles.
Louis XIII
Henceforth Versailles was the possession of the family of Gondi, a family of wealthy and influential parliamentarians at the Parlement of Paris. Several times during the 1610s, the Gondi invited King Louis XIII to hunt in the large forests of Versailles. In 1622 the king became the owner of a piece of wood in Versailles for his private hunting. In 1624 he bought some land and ordered Philibert Le Roy to build there a small hunting "gentleman's chateau" of stone and red bricks with a slate roof.
This small manor was the site of the famous historical event called the Day of the Dupes, on 10 November 1630, when the party of the queen mother was defeated and Richelieu was confirmed as prime minister. Eventually, in 1632, the king obtained the seigneury of Versailles altogether from the Gondije. The castle was enlarged between 1632 and 1634. At the death of Louis XIII in 1643 the village had 1,000 inhabitants.
Louis XIV
King Louis XIV, his son, was only five years old. It was only 20 years later, in 1661, when Louis XIV commenced his personal reign, that the young king showed interest in Versailles. The idea of leaving Paris, where, as a child, he had experienced first-hand the insurrection of the Fronde, had never left him. Louis XIV commissioned his architect Le Vau and his landscape architect Le Nôtre to transform the castle of his father, as well as the park, in order to accommodate the court. In 1678, after the Treaty of Nijmegen, the king decided that the court and the government would be established permanently in Versailles, which happened on 6 May 1682.
At the same time, a new city was emerging from the ground, resulting from an ingenious decree of the king dated 22 May 1671, whereby the king authorized anyone to acquire a lot in the new city for free. There were only two conditions to acquire a lot: 1- a token tax of 5 shillings (5 sols) per arpent of land should be paid every year (in 2005 US dollars, that's $0.03 per 1,000 sq ft (93 m2) per year); 2- a house should be built on the lot according to the plans and models established by the Surintendant des Bâtiments du Roi (architect in chief of the royal demesne). The plans provided for a city built symmetrically with respect to the Avenue de Paris (which starts from the entrance of the castle). The roofs of the buildings and houses of the new city were not to exceed the level of the Marble Courtyard, at the entrance of the castle (built above a hill dominating the city), so that the perspective from the windows of the castle would not be obstructed.
The old village and the Saint Julien church were destroyed to make room for buildings housing the administrative services managing the daily life in the castle. On both sides of the Avenue de Paris were built the Notre-Dame neighborhood and the Saint-Louis neighborhood, with new large churches, markets, aristocratic mansions, buildings all built in very homogeneous style according to the models established by the Surintendant des Bâtiments du Roi. Versailles was a vast construction site for many years. Little by little came to Versailles all those who needed or desired to live close to the political power. At the death of the Sun King in 1715, the village of Versailles had turned into a city of approximately 30,000 inhabitants.
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Louis XV and Louis XVI
When the court of King Louis XV returned to Versailles in 1722, the city had 24,000 inhabitants. With the reign of Louis XV, Versailles grew even further. Versailles was the capital of the most powerful kingdom in Europe, and the whole of Europe admired the new architecture and design trends coming from Versailles. Soon enough, the strict building rules decided under Louis XIV were not respected anymore, real estate speculation flourished, and the lots that had been given for free under Louis XIV were now on the market for hefty prices. By 1744 the population reached 37,000 inhabitants. The cityscape changed considerably under kings Louis XV and Louis XVI. Buildings were now taller. King Louis XV built a Ministry of War, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs (where the Treaty of Paris (1783) ending the American Revolutionary War was signed in 1783 with the United Kingdom), and a Ministry of the Navy. By 1789 the population had reached 60,000 inhabitants,[4] and Versailles was now the seventh or eighth-largest city of France, and one of the largest cities of Europe.
French Revolution
Seat of the political power, Versailles naturally became the cradle of the French Revolution. The Estates-General met in Versailles on 5 May 1789. The members of the Third Estate took the Tennis Court Oath on 20 June 1789, and the National Constituent Assembly abolished feudalism on 4 August 1789. Eventually, on 5 October and 6, 1789, a crowd of women joined by some and some members of the national guard from Paris invaded the castle to protest bread prices and forced the royal family to move back to Paris to do something about it. The National Constituent Assembly followed the king to Paris soon afterwards, and Versailles lost its role of capital city.
From then on, Versailles lost a good deal of its inhabitants. From 60,000, the population declined to 26,974 inhabitants in 1806.[5] The castle, stripped of its furniture and ornaments during the Revolution, was left abandoned, with only Napoleon briefly staying one night there and then leaving the castle for good. Louis-Philippe, who took the throne in the July Revolution of 1830, saved the castle from total ruin by transforming it into a National Museum dedicated to "all the glories of France" in 1837. Versailles had become a sleepy town, a place of pilgrimage for those nostalgic for the old monarchy.
19th century - present
The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 put Versailles in the limelight again. On 18 January 1871 the victorious Germans proclaimed the king of Prussia, Wilhelm I, emperor of Germany in the very Hall of Mirrors of the castle, in an attempt to take revenge for the conquests of Louis XIV two centuries earlier. Then in March of the same year, following the insurrection of the Paris Commune the French government under Thiers relocated to Versailles, from where the insurrection was militarily quelled. The government and the French parliament stayed in Versailles after the quelling of the insurrection, and it was even thought for some time that the capital of France would be moved definitely to Versailles in order to avoid the revolutionary mood of Paris in the future.
Restoration of the monarchy was almost realized in 1873 with parliament offering the crown to Henri, comte de Chambord, but his refusal to accept the tricolor flag that had been adopted by France during the Revolution made the restoration of monarchy impossible for the time being. Versailles was again the political center of France, full of buzz and rumors, with its population briefly peaking at 61,686 in 1872,[5] matching the record level of population reached on the eve of the French Revolution 83 years earlier. Eventually, however, left-wing republicans won a string of parlimantary elections, defeating the parties supporting a restoration of the monarchy, and the new majority decided to relocate the government to Paris in November 1879. Versailles then experienced a new population setback (48,324 inhabitants at the 1881 census).[5] After that, Versailles was never again used as the capital city of France, but the presence of the French Parliament there in the 1870s left a vast hall built in one aisle of the palace which is still used by the French Parliament when it meets in Congress to amend the French Constitution, as well as when the French president addresses the two chambers of the French Parliament.
It was not until 1911 that Versailles definitely recovered its level of population of 1789, with 60,458 inhabitants at the 1911 census.[5] In 1919, at the end of the First World War, Versailles was put in the limelight again as the various treaties ending the war were signed in the castle proper and in the Grand Trianon. After 1919, as the suburbs of Paris were ever expanding, Versailles was absorbed by the urban area of Paris and the city experienced a strong demographic and economic growth, turning it into a large suburban city of the metropolitan area of Paris. The role of Versailles as an administrative and judicial center has been reinforced in the 1960s and 1970s, and somehow Versailles has become the main center of the western suburbs of Paris.
The center of the town has kept its very bourgeois atmosphere, while more middle-class neighborhoods have developed around the train stations and in the outskirts of the city. Versailles is a chic suburb of Paris well linked with the center of Paris by several train lines. However, the city is extremely compartmented, divided by large avenues inherited from the monarchy which create the impression of several small cities ignoring each other. Versailles was never an industrial city, even though there are a few chemical and food processing plants. Essentially, Versailles is a place of services, such as public administration, tourism, business congresses, and festivals. Versailles is also an important military center, with several units and training schools headquartered at the Satory camp, where a military exhibition is organized annually. From 1951 until France's withdrawal from NATO unified command in 1966, nearby Rocquencourt was the site for SHAPE, and the famous 2nd Armored Division was headquartered there until 1999.
Culture
Versailles' primary cultural attraction is the Palace, with its ornately decorated rooms and historic significance. The town also has other points of cultural notability; in recent times, its position as an affluent suburb of Paris has meant that it forms a part of the Paris artistic scene, and musical groups such as Phoenix, Air and Daft Punk have some link to the city,[citation needed] as does the director Michel Gondry.
Demographics
Historical population
| 1450 estimate |
1561 estimate |
1643 estimate |
1715 estimate |
1722 estimate |
1744 estimate |
1787 estimate |
1793 estimate |
1800 census |
1806 census |
1821 census |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100 | 500 | 1,000 | 30,000 | 24,000 | 37,000 | 60,000 | 35,093 | 27,574 | 26,974 | 27,528 |
| 1831 census |
1836 census |
1841 census |
1846 census |
1851 census |
1856 census |
1861 census |
1866 census |
1872 census |
1876 census |
1881 census |
| 28,477 | 29,209 | 35,412 | 34,901 | 35,367 | 39,306 | 43,899 | 44,021 | 61,686 | 49,847 | 48,324 |
| 1886 census |
1891 census |
1896 census |
1901 census |
1906 census |
1911 census |
1921 census |
1926 census |
1931 census |
1936 census |
1946 census |
| 49,852 | 51,679 | 54,874 | 54,982 | 54,820 | 60,458 | 64,753 | 68,574 | 66,859 | 73,839 | 70,141 |
| 1954 census |
1962 census |
1968 census |
1975 census |
1982 census |
1990 census |
1999 census |
2006 census |
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| 84,445 | 86,759 | 90,829 | 94,145 | 91,494 | 87,789 | 85,726 | 87,549 | |||
| Estimates before 1800, official census figures[5] after 1800. | ||||||||||
Immigration
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Transportation
Versailles is served by Versailles – Chantiers station, which is an interchange station on Paris RER line C, on the Transilien La Défense suburban rail line, on the Transilien Paris – Montparnasse suburban rail line, and on several national rail lines, including low-frequency TGV service.
Versailles is also served by two other stations on Paris RER line C: Versailles – Rive Gauche (the closest station to the Palace of Versailles and consequently the station most frequently used by tourists) and Porchefontaine.
Versailles is also served by two stations on the Transilien Paris – Saint-Lazare suburban rail line: Versailles – Rive Droite and Montreuil.
Sister cities
References
- ^ Georges Moussoir, Versailles, "Berceau de la Liberté", in Revue de l'histoire de Versailles et de Seine-et-Oise, 1899, pp. 215-224 (Gallica)
- ^ a b (French) SPLAF. "Ancien département : Seine-et-Oise". http://splaf.free.fr/78o.html. Retrieved 2009-07-07.
- ^ (French) INSEE. "Populations légales 2006 pour les départements et les collectivités d'outre-mer". http://www.insee.fr/fr/ppp/bases-de-donnees/recensement/populations-legales/france-departements.asp. Retrieved 2009-07-07.
- ^ (French) La Grande Encyclopédie (1902). "Volume 31 (on page 882)". http://gallica.bnf.fr/document?O=N024666. Retrieved 2007-06-20.
- ^ a b c d e (French) Cassini Project. "Versailles - Notice communale". http://cassini.ehess.fr/cassini/fr/html/fiche.php?select_resultat=39569. Retrieved 2007-06-20.
External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Versailles |
- Official website
- Wikimapia satellite view
- City council website
- Satellite Image of Versailles
- Palace of Versailles photos
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