Service Door

From my retro style photo album. Servants posing in front of the service entrance of the Porte de Paris’s living quarters.

Directoire Armchairs

A pair of Directoire armchairs.

The Directoire style, which follows Louis XVI style, is characterized by its greater sobriety and simplicity. All the more so when I make the furniture!

Note how the back legs and the sides of the back are made of a single and curved piece of wood.

Round About Chairs

Fed up with those boring armchairs, always the same with a square back?

Well here is at last a different model, with a round back.

A pair of two new Louis XVI style armchairs « en médaillon »

This type of armchair is still said to be « à la reine » (à la queen) because the back is flat, but is also « en médaillon » (or with a circular back).

Two armchairs with square backs and two with round ones from a series of six new armchairs

Four More Armchairs

Four more armchairs entered the Palace’s collections today. The model is simillar to the one we’ve shown here so far, although the colours are different. Hopefully we’ll have a different model to show you some day soon!

Blue Sky Dream

Two pictures of the Paris Door in Villepreux under a blue sky after today’s rain

Porte De Paris In Villepreux

From the time of Louis XIV until the French Revolution, the Palace of Versailles, its Gardens and its Small Park were surounded by a much bigger park or Hunting Grounds. This enormous game reserve, which contained many villages, was surounded by a 40 kilometre wall and was gained access to by 24 doors. 1

Several of these doors were built on the exact same design by the king’s architect Jules Hardouin Mansart. Later in the 18 th century, almost all these doors received additional constructions, in the form of more confortable rooms and even farm buildings, as the guards were no longer satisfied with the cramped single room in which their fathers and their families had lived in.

We started a couple of years ago on the restauration and reconstruction of one of these doors, the Paris Door in Villepreux. 2 The door stands at some 8 kilometres west of the Palace.

This is the door at night as seen from the east, when standing inside the hunting grounds.

As you can see, still more work is needed on one of the farm buildings on the right. On the left stands the new accomodations built for the guard in the 18th century.

Here is the door from outside the Great Park, as you would see it if you were coming from the west and about to enter (or not!) the grounds of the Palace of Versailles.

Mind you if you were on foot, still 8 kilometres to go before reaching the Palace itself!

Well, this was more of a teaser than an extensive visit of the buildings, I hope I will be able to show you more soon!

1. See the article : Pour les plaisirs du roi : les métamorphoses de la porte de Trappes (in French) by Laurent Condamy and Julien Lacaze in Versalia, Revue de la Société des Amis de Versailles n°15, 2012.

2. We had the idea of rebuilding the Villepreux door after having read the article mentioned above, which tells the story of another door of the Great Park.

More Stairs

The stairs in my home at the entrance of the Petite Venise, near the head of the Grand Canal in Versailles. I am now renovating the house.