Sedan Chair and Vinaigrette

Versailles is made of gardens, paths, courtyards, galleries, antechambers and private rooms. But what we can forget when visiting Versailles today is the multitude of sedan chairs of all shapes and forms that obstructed all these places during the biggest part of the Ancient Regime. Here is an example of those abandoned modes of transportation, now very rare, which we try to acquire, save and restore whenever possible. 

The one on the left is a fairly common sedan chair; the one on the right with the wheels is called a vinaigrette. The name supposedly comes from the "vinaigriers" or vinegar sellers who, apparently, used a similar mode of transportation to carry their goods. As the vinaigrette, if used in Versailles, was anyway limited to courtyards or ground level rooms at the most, you could access fairly far into an apartments, even the king's one, in your sedan chair, if you were a member a the royal family. We'll try to present these vehicles (and hopefully nicer ones!) in context inside the palace when we have restored rooms suitable to accommodate them.