THE number and fervour of English visitors to Versailles challenges the legend of eternal rivalry between the two countries. France and England were connected by many ties of commerce, culture, and taste and the journey from London to Paris before the advent of the railways could take only two days. Despite frequent wars, —1689–97, 1702–13, 1742–48, 1756–63, 1778–83—English men and women would be among the most honored guests, most admiring visitors and most fervent imitators of Louis XIV’s ‘most magnificent and Royal palace of Versailles’, as The London Gazette called it in 1687. The newspaper was, in fact, reporting on a model of the palace ‘made in copper, gilt over with silver and gold, and of all the gardens and Waterworks’, ‘24 foot in length and 18 in breadth, that was being exhibited every day, from dawn to dusk, in Exeter Change in the Strand.
For those able to travel, Versailles was as appealing as the Louvre today, as it held the best of the royal collections of pictures, sculptures, and works of art (Fig 1). In 1698, in one of many English books describing Paris and Versailles, the English doctor Martin Lister praised Versailles as ‘the most magnificent [palace] of any in Europe… The esplanade towards the gardens and parterres are the noblest things that can be seen’. Even the King’s private apartments with his personal collections could be visited, if the King was away and you had a letter of recommendation: Louis XIV had created Versailles to impress Europe, as much as France.
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