1.
Palace of Versailles
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The Palace of Versailles, Château de Versailles, or simply Versailles, is a royal château in Versailles in the Île-de-France region of France. Versailles is therefore not only as a building, but as a symbol of the system of absolute monarchy of the Ancien Régime. First built by Louis XIII in 1623, as a lodge of brick and stone. The first phase of the expansion was designed and supervised by the architect Louis Le Vau and it culminated in the addition of three new wings of stone, which surrounded Louis XIIIs original building on the north, south, and west. After Le Vaus death in 1670, the work was taken over and completed by his assistant, charles Le Brun designed and supervised the elaborate interior decoration, and André Le Nôtre landscaped the extensive Gardens of Versailles. Le Brun and Le Nôtre collaborated on the fountains, and Le Brun supervised the design. During the second phase of expansion, two enormous wings north and south of the wings flanking the Cour Royale were added by the architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart. He also replaced Le Vaus large terrace, facing the garden on the west, with became the most famous room of the palace. The Royal Chapel of Versailles, located at the end of the north wing, was begun by Mansart in 1688. One of the most baffling aspects to the study of Versailles is the cost – how much Louis XIV, owing to the nature of the construction of Versailles and the evolution of the role of the palace, construction costs were essentially a private matter. Initially, Versailles was planned to be a residence for Louis XIV and was referred to as the kings house. Once Louis XIV embarked on his campaigns, expenses for Versailles became more of a matter for public record. To counter the costs of Versailles during the years of Louis XIVs personal reign. Accordingly, all materials that went into the construction and decoration of Versailles were manufactured in France, even the mirrors used in the decoration of the Hall of Mirrors were made in France. While Venice in the 17th century had the monopoly on the manufacture of mirrors, to meet the demands for decorating and furnishing Versailles, Colbert nationalised the tapestry factory owned by the Gobelin family, to become the Manufacture royale des Gobelins. In 1667, the name of the enterprise was changed to the Manufacture royale des Meubles de la Couronne, the Comptes meticulously list the expenditures on the silver furniture – disbursements to artists, final payments, delivery – as well as descriptions and weight of items purchased. Entries for 1681 and 1682 concerning the silver used in the salon de Mercure serve as an example. 5 In anticipation, For the silver balustrade for the bedroom,90,000 livres II
2.
Louis Le Vau
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Louis Le Vau was a French Classical architect who worked for Louis XIV of France. He was born and died in Paris and he was responsible, with André Le Nôtre and Charles Le Brun, for the redesign of the château of Vaux-le-Vicomte. His later works included the Palace of Versailles and his collaboration with Claude Perrault on the Palais du Louvre, sulpice, and Hôtel Lambert, on the Île Saint-Louis, Paris. La peinture à Versailles, XVIIe siècle, Louis Le Vau, Mazarins Collège, Colberts Revenge. La Collection de portraits de lAcadémie royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Peintures entrées sous le règne de Louis XIV (1648–1715, université de Paris IV,1994, pp. 164–166. Portraits des premiers architectes de Versailles, Revue des Arts, March 1955, françois dOrbay, Architecte de Louis XIV. Media related to Louis Le Vau at Wikimedia Commons
3.
History of the Palace of Versailles
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The Palace of Versailles is a royal château in Versailles, in the Île-de-France region of France. When the château was built, Versailles was a village, today, however, it is a suburb of Paris. Versailles is therefore not only as a building, but as well as a symbol of the system of absolute monarchy of the Ancien Régime. During this period, the village of Versailles centred on a castle and church. In 1575, Albert de Gondi, a naturalized Florentine who gained prominence at the court of Henry II, in the early seventeenth century, Gondi invited Louis XIII on several hunting trips in the forests surrounding Versailles. Pleased with the location, Louis ordered the construction of a lodge in 1624. Designed by Philibert Le Roy, the structure, a small château, was constructed of stone and red brick, eight years later, Louis obtained the seigneury of Versailles from the Gondi family and began to make enlargements to the château. Adjacent exterior towers were located at the four corners, with the entire structure surrounded by a moat and this was preceded by two service wings, creating a forecourt with a grilled entrance marked by two round towers. The vignette also shows a garden on the side of the château with a fountain on the central axis. Louis XIV had played and hunted at the site as a boy, with a few modifications, this structure would become the core of the new palace. Louis XIIIs successor, Louis XIV, had a great interest in Versailles and he settled on the royal hunting lodge at Versailles, and over the following decades had it expanded into one of the largest palaces in the world. Beginning in 1661, the architect Louis Le Vau, landscape architect André Le Nôtre and this was done to fulfill Louis XIVs desire to establish a new centre for the royal court. Following the Treaties of Nijmegen in 1678, he began to move the court to Versailles. The court was established there on 6 May 1682. By moving his court and government to Versailles, Louis XIV hoped to more control of the government from the nobility. All the power of France emanated from this centre, there were government offices here, as well as the homes of thousands of courtiers, their retinues, like other French court manners, étiquette was quickly imitated in other European courts. The expansion of the château became synonymous with the absolutism of Louis XIV, in 1661, following the death of Cardinal Mazarin, chief minister of the government, Louis had declared that he would be his own chief minister. The idea of establishing the court at Versailles was conceived to ensure all of his advisors
4.
Grand appartement de la reine
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This article is about the grand appartement de la reine of the Palace of Versailles. Additionally, Louis XIV’s granddaughter-in-law, Marie-Adélaïde de Savoie, as duchesse de Bourgogne, occupied these rooms from 1697, with the construction of the Hall of Mirrors, which began in 1678, the configuration of the grand appartement de la reine changed. The chapel was transformed into the salle des gardes de la reine, the salle des gardes de la reine communicates with a loggia that issues from the escalier de la reine, which corresponded to the escalier des ambassadeurs in the grand appartement du roi. The loggia also provides access to the appartement du roi, the suite of rooms in which Louis XIV lived. Toward the end of Louis XIV’s reign, the de la reine became the principal entrance to the château. After the destruction of the escalier des ambassadeurs in 1752, the de la reine became the main entrance to the château. In 1722, Louis XV reinstalled the court at Versailles and began modifications to the château’s interior, among the most noteworthy of the building projects during Louis XV’s reign, the redecoration of the chambre de la reine must be cited. To commemorate the birth of his son and heir, Louis, in 1729. Elements of the de la reine as it had been used by Marie-Thérèse and Marie-Adélaïde de Savoie were removed. During her life at Versailles, Marie Leszczynska lived in the appartement de la reine. In 1770, when the Austrian archduchess Marie-Antoinette married the dauphin, later Louis XVI, upon Louis XVI’s ascension to the throne in 1774, Marie-Antoinette ordered major redecoration of the grand appartement de la reine. At this time, the queen’s apartment achieved the arrangement that we see today, salle des gardes de la reine — this room remained virtually unchanged by Marie-Antoinette. Antichambre — this room was transformed into the antichambre du grand couvert and it was in this room that the king, queen, and members of the royal family dined in public. Occasionally, this served as a theater for the château. Grand cabinet — this room was transformed into the salon des nobles, following the tradition established by her predecessor, Marie-Antoinette would hold formal audiences in this room. When not used for audiences, the salon des nobles served as an antechamber to the queen’s bedroom. Chambre de la reine — this room was used as the queen’s bedroom, on the night of 6/7 October 1789, Marie-Antoinette fled from the Paris mob by escaping through a private corridor that connected her apartment with that of the king
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Piano nobile
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The piano nobile is the principal floor of a large house, usually built in one of the styles of Classical Renaissance architecture. This floor contains the reception and bedrooms of the house. The piano nobile is often the first or sometimes the second storey, located above a ground floor containing minor rooms, the reasons for this were so the rooms would have finer views, and more practically to avoid the dampness and odors of the street level. This is especially true in Venice where the piano nobile of the many palazzi is especially obvious from the exterior by virtue of its windows and balconies. Examples of this are Ca Foscari, Ca dOro, Ca Vendramin Calergi, larger windows than those on other floors are usually the most obvious feature of the piano nobile. Often in England and Italy the piano nobile is reached by an outer staircase. Kedleston Hall is an example of this in England, as is Villa Capra in Italy, most houses contained a secondary floor above the piano nobile which contained more intimate withdrawing and bedrooms for private use by the family of the house when no honoured guests were present. Above this floor would often be an attic floor containing staff bedrooms, in these instances, occasionally in museums etc. the principal piano nobile is described as the primo piano nobile to differentiate it. Though often found, this usage is potentially misleading, rooms in the piano nobile are always the grandest, the term is not used in Britain. This arrangement of floors continued throughout Europe for as long as large houses continued to be built in the classical styles and this arrangement was designed at Buckingham Palace as recently as the mid-19th century. Holkham Hall, Osterley Park and Chiswick House are among the innumerable 18th-century English houses which employed this design, Life in the English Country House. Harris, John, de Bellaigue, Geoffrey, & Miller, Oliver, English Country Houses, Early Georgian 1715–1760 London, Country Life. Pavilion Books Ltd. Kaminski Marion, Art and Architecture of Venice,1999, Könemann, ISBN 3-8290-2657-9 Masson, Georgina
6.
Enfilade (architecture)
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In architecture, an enfilade is a suite of rooms formally aligned with each other. This was a feature in grand European architecture from the Baroque period onward, although there are earlier examples. The doors entering each room are aligned with the doors of the rooms along a single axis. The enfilade may be used as a route and is a common arrangement in museums and art galleries. In a Baroque palace, access down an enfilade suite of state rooms typically was restricted by the rank or degree of intimacy of the visitor, the first rooms were more public, and usually at the end was the bedroom, sometimes with an intimate cabinet or boudoir beyond. Baroque protocol dictated that visitors of lower rank than their host would be escorted by servants down the enfilade to the farthest room their status allowed. If the visitor was of equal or higher rank, the host would advance down the enfilade to meet his guest, at parting, the same ritual would be observed, although the host might pay his guest a compliment by taking him back farther than his rank strictly dictated. If a person of higher rank visited, these rituals extended beyond the enfilade to the entrance hall. Memoirs and letters of the period often note the details of where meetings and partings occurred, even to whether they were in the centre of the room. Such suites also were used for entertaining, noblemens houses, especially if a visit from the monarch was hoped for, also often feature enfiladed suites, as at Chatsworth House, Blenheim Palace, the Château de Louveciennes, or Boughton House. The bedrooms in such suites were often only slept in on royal visits, although as many grand bedrooms before the nineteenth century. Other enfilades culminated in a used as a throne room. The Palace of Westminster, shown below, comes into this category, the enfilade of State Rooms presents a view from the Robing Room and Royal Gallery - B and C on the plan at right - through to the Princes Chamber. Barry also used a number of enfilades in his extension to the National Gallery, London and these have been extended and added to in the recent Sainsbury Wing, so that now the view down the longest enfilade traverses fifteen rooms. Shotgun house – similar design in vernacular nineteenth- and twentieth-century American architecture
7.
Throne room
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Any of these could just as well be transferred, even on a permanent basis, to one or more other rooms, even outside the palace or ambulant. A common misconception is that kings and other ruling princes governed their lands seated on a throne for most of the working day. In earlier times this may have been true for some rulers who actually presided over their council, yet another room was used. Many others were almost constantly on the move with an ambulant court and it could even have been that the crown did not have an effective capital, as in England during most of the time before the Norman conquest. Or it could have been that the crown had, rather, other monarchies frequently changed their capital, but then they would have used a mobile throne, possibly in addition to the permanent one used for enthronement and/or coronation. There are cases in Africa and Asia where the name of the capital is not a fixed place. In some climates court migrated annually between a summer and a winter capital and it has also common to spend quite some time, without need for practical reason, in secondary residences, not in the least hunting lodges. Even when their capitals were well fixed English and French Renaissance kings used to travel extensively, henry VIIIs most frequently used residence was, in fact, at Hampton Court, outside London. Nowadays throne rooms are used for occasional grand ceremonies. Paper work is done in an office, and most guests are received in a salon, the following are notable throne rooms. Others are listed in the article on thrones and it was inspired by King Solomons throne which according to the Bible was made of ivory and had six steps with lion figures on each. The throne room actually used for receiving ambasadors is at Christiansborg, the throne was commissioned by Louis XIV and was in use up until 1789. In 1837 the Château de Versailles became a national museum, as part of the greater Versailles museum, the room is open to the public. Preferring Fontainebleau over Versailles, Napoleon had Louis XVs bedroom converted into a throne room, the palace was last used by Napoleon III when it was later declared a national monument in 1871, after the collapse of the empire. For over 700 years, the Grimaldi family have ruled Monaco and it also where most civil marriages of the royal family occur, before then having a religious ceremony elsewhere. The residence of the Wittelsbach monarchs of Bavaria has many throne-rooms and they were all built in the 19th century, after the monarchs of Bavaria became kings. Therefore, the throne-rooms are all in the classicism style and these thrones were used by King David Kalakaua, his wife Queen Kapiolani, and his successor Queen Liliʻuokalani. Kalakaua and his wife actually disliked sitting on the thrones, instead preferring to stand in front of them while receiving guests, the trial of Queen Liliuokalani also occurred in this room where she was found guilty and imprisoned within the palace by the Republic of Hawaii
8.
Diana (mythology)
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In Roman mythology, Diana was the goddess of the hunt, the moon, and nature being associated with wild animals and woodland, and having the power to talk to and control animals. She was eventually equated with the Greek goddess Artemis, though she had an independent origin in Italy, Diana was worshipped in ancient Roman religion and is revered in Roman Neopaganism and Stregheria. Diana was known to be the goddess of childbirth and women. She was one of the three goddesses, along with Minerva and Vesta, who swore never to marry. Oak groves were especially sacred to her as were deer, according to mythology, Diana was born with her twin brother, Apollo, on the island of Delos, daughter of Jupiter and Latona. She made up a triad with two other Roman deities, Egeria the water nymph, her servant and assistant midwife, and Virbius, the woodland god. Diana is a form developed from an ancient *divios, corresponding to later divus, dius, as in Dius Fidius, Dea Dia. It is rooted in Indoeuropean *dyw, meaning sky or daylight, from which also derived the name of Vedic god Dyaus and the Latin deus, dies. On the Tablets of Pylos a theonym διϝια is supposed as referring to a deity precursor of Artemis, Modern scholars mostly accept the identification. The ancient Latin writers Varro and Cicero considered the etymology of Dīāna as allied to that of dies, the persona of Diana is complex and contains a number of archaic features. According to Georges Dumézil it falls into a subset of celestial gods. Such gods, while keeping the original features of celestial divinities, the celestial character of Diana is reflected in her connection with light, inaccessibility, virginity, and her preference for dwelling on high mountains and in sacred woods. Diana therefore reflects the world in its sovereignty, supremacy, impassibility. At the same time, however, she is seen as active in ensuring the succession of kings and these functions are apparent in the traditional institutions and cults related to the goddess. This ever open succession reveals the character and mission of the goddess as a guarantor of kingly status through successive generations. Her function as bestower of authority to rule is also attested in the story related by Livy in which a Sabine man who sacrifices a heifer to Diana wins for his country the seat of the Roman empire. Diana was also worshipped by women who wanted to be pregnant or who, once pregnant and this form of worship is attested in archeological finds of votive statuettes in her sanctuary in the nemus Aricinum as well as in ancient sources, e. g. Ovid. According to Dumezil the forerunner of all gods is an Indian epic hero who was the image of the Vedic god Dyaus
9.
Mars
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Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, after Mercury. Named after the Roman god of war, it is referred to as the Red Planet because the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance. Mars is a planet with a thin atmosphere, having surface features reminiscent both of the impact craters of the Moon and the valleys, deserts, and polar ice caps of Earth. The rotational period and seasonal cycles of Mars are likewise similar to those of Earth, Mars is the site of Olympus Mons, the largest volcano and second-highest known mountain in the Solar System, and of Valles Marineris, one of the largest canyons in the Solar System. The smooth Borealis basin in the northern hemisphere covers 40% of the planet, Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, which are small and irregularly shaped. These may be captured asteroids, similar to 5261 Eureka, a Mars trojan, there are ongoing investigations assessing the past habitability potential of Mars, as well as the possibility of extant life. Future astrobiology missions are planned, including the Mars 2020 and ExoMars rovers, liquid water cannot exist on the surface of Mars due to low atmospheric pressure, which is about 6⁄1000 that of the Earths, except at the lowest elevations for short periods. The two polar ice caps appear to be largely of water. The volume of ice in the south polar ice cap, if melted. On November 22,2016, NASA reported finding a large amount of ice in the Utopia Planitia region of Mars. The volume of water detected has been estimated to be equivalent to the volume of water in Lake Superior, Mars can easily be seen from Earth with the naked eye, as can its reddish coloring. Its apparent magnitude reaches −2.91, which is surpassed only by Jupiter, Venus, the Moon, optical ground-based telescopes are typically limited to resolving features about 300 kilometers across when Earth and Mars are closest because of Earths atmosphere. Mars is approximately half the diameter of Earth with an area only slightly less than the total area of Earths dry land. Mars is less dense than Earth, having about 15% of Earths volume and 11% of Earths mass, the red-orange appearance of the Martian surface is caused by iron oxide, or rust. It can look like butterscotch, other common colors include golden, brown, tan. Like Earth, Mars has differentiated into a metallic core overlaid by less dense materials. Current models of its interior imply a core with a radius of about 1,794 ±65 kilometers, consisting primarily of iron and this iron sulfide core is thought to be twice as rich in lighter elements than Earths. The core is surrounded by a mantle that formed many of the tectonic and volcanic features on the planet
10.
Mercury (planet)
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Mercury is the smallest and innermost planet in the Solar System. Its orbital period around the Sun of 88 days is the shortest of all the planets in the Solar System and it is named after the Roman deity Mercury, the messenger to the gods. Like Venus, Mercury orbits the Sun within Earths orbit as a planet, so it can only be seen visually in the morning or the evening sky. Also, like Venus and the Moon, the displays the complete range of phases as it moves around its orbit relative to Earth. Seen from Earth, this cycle of phases reoccurs approximately every 116 days, although Mercury can appear as a bright star-like object when viewed from Earth, its proximity to the Sun often makes it more difficult to see than Venus. Mercury is tidally or gravitationally locked with the Sun in a 3,2 resonance, as seen relative to the fixed stars, it rotates on its axis exactly three times for every two revolutions it makes around the Sun. As seen from the Sun, in a frame of reference that rotates with the orbital motion, an observer on Mercury would therefore see only one day every two years. Mercurys axis has the smallest tilt of any of the Solar Systems planets, at aphelion, Mercury is about 1.5 times as far from the Sun as it is at perihelion. Mercurys surface appears heavily cratered and is similar in appearance to the Moons, the polar regions are constantly below 180 K. The planet has no natural satellites. Mercury is one of four planets in the Solar System. It is the smallest planet in the Solar System, with a radius of 2,439.7 kilometres. Mercury is also smaller—albeit more massive—than the largest natural satellites in the Solar System, Ganymede, Mercury consists of approximately 70% metallic and 30% silicate material. Mercurys density is the second highest in the Solar System at 5.427 g/cm3, Mercurys density can be used to infer details of its inner structure. Although Earths high density results appreciably from gravitational compression, particularly at the core, Mercury is much smaller, therefore, for it to have such a high density, its core must be large and rich in iron. Geologists estimate that Mercurys core occupies about 55% of its volume, Research published in 2007 suggests that Mercury has a molten core. Surrounding the core is a 500–700 km mantle consisting of silicates, based on data from the Mariner 10 mission and Earth-based observation, Mercurys crust is estimated to be 35 km thick. One distinctive feature of Mercurys surface is the presence of narrow ridges
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