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Versailles, formerly de facto capital of the kingdom of France,
is now a wealthy suburb of Paris and is still an important
administrative and judicial center. The city (commune) of
Versailles, located in the western suburbs of Paris, 17.1 km
(10.6 mi) from the center of Paris, is the préfecture (capital)
of the Yvelines département. The population of the city
according to 2005 estimates was 86,400 inhabitants, down from a
peak of 94,145 inhabitants in 1975. Versailles is made
world-famous by the Château de Versailles, from the forecourt of
which the city has grown.
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 (August 24, 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 November 10, 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 Gondi.
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 May 6, 1682.
At the same time, a new city was emerging from the ground,
resulting from an ingenious decree of the king dated May 22,
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.
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 of 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,[1] 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 May 5, 1789. The members of the Third Estate took
the Tennis Court Oath on June 20, 1789, and the National
Constituent Assembly abolished feudalism on August 4, 1789.
Eventually, on October 5 and 6, 1789, a throng from Paris
invaded the castle and forced the royal family to move back to
Paris. 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.[2] 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. King Louis-Philippe 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 sort of
Sleeping Beauty. It was a place of pilgrimage for those
nostalgic of the old monarchy.
19th to 21st Century
The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 put Versailles in the limelight
again. On January 18, 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 even almost realized in 1873
with Henri, comte de Chambord. Versailles was again the
political center of France, full of buzz and rumors, with its
population briefly peaking at 61,686 in 1872,matching the record
level of population reached on the eve of the French Revolution
83 years earlier. Eventually, however, as the left-wing
republicans won elections after elections, the parties
supporting a restoration of the monarchy were defeated and the
new majority decided to relocate the government to Paris in
November 1879, with Versailles experiencing a new population
setback (48,324 inhabitants at the 1881 census).[2] 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.
It was not until 1911 that Versailles definitely recovered its
level of population of 1789, with 60,458 inhabitants at the 1911
census.[2] 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
centre of the western suburbs of Paris.
The centre 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.
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