Versailles at Night

Recently, several photos were posted on the Versailles Facebook page. They were picturing the magnificent castle at night, with a very special lightning.

The clock, photo : EPV / Thomas Garnier

The Entrance, photo by : EPV / Thomas Garnier

The facade of the palace under the light. photo: EPV / Thomas Garnier

Hall of mirrors : EPV / Thomas Garnier

Versailles on Wiki Commons

If you're not following the Chateau de Versailles on Facebook or on Twitter, you definitely should ! I met the people in charge of these accounts, and they explained to me what they were doing with these. They try to make discover hidden places, organizing little contests, talking about press articles about the Palace. It is really interesting and very fun.
 A few days ago, they published a little article about the recent partnership they had with Wiki Commons, offering a great range of beautiful aerial pictures of the domain.

All of them are really amazing ! I post some of them here, and leave you the link to see them all.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Aerial_views_of_the_domain_of_Versailles

Closing Days

One of the best privileges I got when working at the Palace, was to be allowed in on mondays, the closing day.

If you follow the Palace on social medias (Twitter and Facebook), on monday, you can see pictures of the empty rooms and corridors. 

Empty Queen's Bedchamber (photo by me)

Empty Hall Of Mirrors (photo by me)

You may think that, since its closed, there is nothing inside, but you're wrong. There are less people than any other day, but still. There are people cleaning statues, floors, chandeliers. On monday, the Palace also offers visits for VIPs (for example, Leonardo Di Caprio came in June, or Kim & Kanye in May 2014). While wandering through the empty corridors, you can encounter curators watching paintings and art to see if there's any problems with it. Finally, monday is usually a shootingday for television documentaries or movies. For example, on my last monday at Versailles, I met three BBC journalists making a film about Louis XIV.

Salon de l'Oeil-De-Boeuf (photo by me)

One monday, we also realised a photoshoot of some furniture. The pictures we take are for the Réunion des Musées Nationaux (National Museums Reunion) and will be used for posters, postcards, and posted on the RMN's website .

photo by me

Salon de la Paix (photo by me)

The Latona Fountain

Once you're in the gardens, and once you've passed the great stairs, you'll see the Latona fountain. It is one of the most interesting of them all.

Latona fountain, as seen from the stairs (photo RMN)

If you're familiar with Greek and Roman mythology, you might know the story behind this sculputre. On top, we can see a woman, Latona, with two children at her feet. These two are Apollo and Diane the twin gods Latona had with Jupiter. Juno, Jupiter's wife, forced her to exile in Minor Asia. When she arrived, Latona was rejected by the local peasants, who hated her, obeying Juno's orders. Latona implored Jupiter to help her and their children, the all-mighty god transform all of the peasants into frogs and toads. We can see the peasants under Latona here, some of them are completely transformed, but some are still half human-half toad.

This magnificient sculpture was made by the Marsy brothers, who worked almost all their life to work in Versailles for Louis XIV.

Currently, the fountain is in restoration, and to compensate, the Palace made several videos, explaining why this restoration was necessary to the fountain. You can watch more on their YouTube channel.

They also put a website online, to follow the restoration works: http://latone.chateauversailles.fr/