My Love for Louis (XIV)

Here's what I did this week! Brought to you by "My Internet is too Slow for Me to Watch Scandal."

Last weekend a bunch of people from the program went to Versailles for the day. After getting up nice and early that sunny Saturday morning, we joined the long line of tourists to enter King Louis XIV's castle. In an earlier post I mentioned that Louis XIV is my favorite king. I can't even tell you how true that is. This man was crazily self-obsessed. Practically all of the Versailles palace as we know it was made under the control of this Louis. I shall explain a little why Louis XIV is so awesome.

MINI HISTORY LESSON (skip to below if you aren't interested, but you should be): When Louis was a child much of his family was killed in the Fronde, a revolt of the nobles of France. As a result, Louis never trusted nobles later in life. So when the monarchy was restored and he became king, he made the Louvre (which was formerly the royal palace) into a museum, and had Versailles as his palace so he could keep the nobles contained away from the Paris, and there he could watch over (control) them. He then made tasks for the nobles to do that involved taking care of him, the great and powerful Sun King (he was very into myths and used Apollo as god of the sun in a lot of imagery throughout the palace and gardens). He was basically a manipulative genius. One noble had the job to wake him up every morning; one noble dressed him; the most honorable job a noble could have was to be in the bathroom with him (doing what I'm not exactly sure), because there was no where for Louis to go as they talked to him about their ideas.

Louis was an egomaniac (if you couldn't tell already). The entire palace was for him, and everything the nobles did was for him. There is one garden area shaped like an amphitheater with seats made of the foliage where Louis would perform his (sub-par) ballet recitals and forced everyone to watch him.  But besides himself, he was capable of loving others; in fact, many others. Louis was quite the ladies man in his time. It might have helped that he was the king of France. But the gardens at Versailles, which are incredibly expansive, have certain "rooms" that were created for his various lovers, decorated in different ways with numerous fountains. His love for the various women throughout his life can be seen all throughout the gardens of Versailles, if you know where to look. .

Most of this I know from the guided tour I did last time I was in Paris (thanks Auntie Michelle!) and from AP European History in high school. In sum: Louis XIV wanted to suppress the power of the nobles, loved women almost as much as he loved himself, and made Versailles as a combination of all these reasons. The expansion of Versailles didn't stop at him though; his children and children's children lived and embellished the castle even more. Marie Antoinette lived there for several years and she has here own little village at the far end of the grounds.

That was a lot more history than I was expecting. Here are some pictures!

I'm not even sure what the point of this room was,
other than to look beautiful.

There's a lot going on here.

One of the royal bedrooms. It's insane.

Hall of Mirrors.

Marie Antoinette's bedroom.

This is Marie Antoinette's fake village. It's really cute and Hobbit-like
but my camera died right after this, sorry.

Overall, Versailles was absolutely amazing and beautiful.

The rest of the week was less enjoyable. I had an abnormally large amount of school work, so not much sightseeing got done.

Thursday, our group went to the Opera. It was at the same place as the ballet, but I would say I definitely enjoyed the ballet more, in large part because of our seats. At the ballet we were on the main floor, but this time we were the absolute last row all the way at the top. We were at eye level with the giant chandelier. Besides barely being able to see the stage, the leg room was less than the length of my legs. I'm a tall person, so minimal leg room isn't unusual, but even those of "average" height - the girls who are about 5'6" - didn't have enough space, so I was struggling.

The view from my seat. My fear of heights was especially strong up there.

On Friday, since we don't have classes, my professor and her husband offered to take us to a museum that we might not otherwise know of. It's called the Jacquemart Andre Museum, and was a private residence in the 18th century. The owner of the house was incredibly rich, and he was a private collector of art, but when he died his house and art because a museum. It was smaller and less crowded than the more well-known museums, and just overall really cool. (There was a cushion and dresser from Louis XIV which made me happy.)

Louis XIV's dresser

Incredible staircase

Today, Saturday, I was planning on going to the Catacombs, but due to the line, Austin and I ended up wandering around the Montparnasse cemetery instead. This was by no means a bad thing. French (or even all European?) cemeteries are much different from American ones in that the tombs are large structures sticking out of the ground. We saw the tombs of Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Charles Baudelaire, Samuel Beckett, and many, many more we didn't know.

Overall, this post ended up being a lot more historical than I was expecting, but it was worth it, and I hope you maybe learned something from it! Learning about these places, events, and people, and now being able to see them first hand is a surreal experience, and I love every second of it.

This coming week I'll be in Morocco, so next time I post I will have a lot to say!