Versailles, France –
It’s hard to believe that this place is still used to host foreign dignitaries.
It would be like staying in a museum.
Then again, I’m not a king.
Those guys are probably used to living in places like this.
Lots of rooms all decked out with antiques that belonged to kings from long ago.
Me? I prefer furnishings I don’t have to worry about damaging.
But if you’re a king, you probably don’t worry about that anyway.
It’s someone else’s concern.
I’m talking about the Grand Trianon, on the far reaches of the grounds of Versailles, well away from the main palace.
It’s kinda like a smaller version of the main palace, but away from it so that the King and his companions could get away from all the stuff that came with life at Versailles.
All the pomp, and courtiers, and ministers, and people waiting on your every utterance.
Yeah, I’d want a getaway myself.
I might go away and never come back.
Then again, I’m not a king.
We had taken the tours of the main palace, and the servant’s quarters on a previous visit, so we didn’t feel the need to fight the crowds.
Not to mention all the waiting until our tour time slot, just to see again what we’ve already seen.
Instead, we decided that this time, we would hike across the gardens and visit both the Grand and the Petit Trianons.
After all, they were still part of Versailles.
Just a smaller, less crowded part.
And part that we could wander on our own, not as part of a tour led by a docent.
Yes, the wandering was limited to where we were allowed to visit.
After all, both of these places were filled with antiques from back a few hundreds of years ago.
We weren’t allowed to get too close.
But for where we were allowed to roam, we were on our own, setting our own pace.
No tour guides that we needed to keep up with.
No fear of falling behind.
We started with the Petit Trianon, a mini-Palace closely associated with Marie Antoinette.
It seems she adopted it as her personal Palace.
It’s actually kind of homey.
I could almost picture myself living in some place like this.
I mean, it’s bigger than we need, but not really that much bigger than some of the McMansions that I see around town.
Although it does have more servant rooms than most modern McMansions do.
With the modern ones, you’re lucky to find more than a broom closet for the maid to stay in.
Here, you’ve got almost as much room for the servants as for the royalty.
Almost.
Of course, their rooms are for working in.
Cooking, cleaning, laundry.
While the “master’s” rooms are more for leisure.
Still, remove most of the servant’s quarters, and you’ve got something not much bigger than a McMansion.
Only with much larger rooms.
Not that they feel any roomier.
They’re still stuffed with enough furnishings that they feel almost as small as a modern, more bourgeoisie version.
OK, it’s a bit larger than a McMansion, but still, it’s nothing like it’s bigger sibling.
The Grand Trianon is definitely meant for royalty.
Maybe a billionaire.
Definitely not anyone like me.
I’m way too close to pond scum to even think about living some place like this.
It probably doesn’t help that I don’t understand why the Grand Trianon was designed the way it was.
I mean, I can understand palaces where a set of private rooms intended to be used by one or two people are linked in series, and then they connect to some shared room or hallway.
You can go through all shared rooms until you get to one set of private rooms.
Here, it’s like a single series of rooms, and the only way to get from one set of private rooms without going through another would require going outside (or using the servant’s passageways).
Maybe that was the idea.
After all, the two halves of the place are separated by an open-air hallway.
And it was originally intended for the private use of the King and Queen.
Maybe they didn’t need to worry about visitors tromping through their private chambers to get from one room to the next.
And if they really needed, they could go outside.
After all, this place was built where just about every room opens onto the gardens.
It’s almost as if this palace wasn’t intended to be used during the winter months, when the weather would be cold and nasty.
Who’d want to go outside to get from one room to the next then?
Not that it would stop anyone.
After all, these were royalty, and the weather was a mere inconvenience.
A nuisance.
It would have been their servants who had to deal with it.
But now, anyone can pretend, for just a moment, that they’re royalty.
At least for their photos, posing in front of the palace.
As long as they stay behind the ropes once they enter the place.
After all, once you go inside, it’s very much a look and don’t touch policy.
Unless you happen to be an important foreign dignitary.
For those, they can still touch.
I assume.
After all, it would be difficult to stay here without touching at least some of the furnishings…
And I assume that during those times, this place reverts back to the status it had when Louis was king.
And us commoners weren’t allowed in.
Pond scum that we are…
For more photos from the Grand Trianon, click here. Or of the Petit Trianon, click here.
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