À côté de Versailles, Marly

• Main Author: Gérard Sabatier
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Centre de Recherche du Château de Versailles 2006-03-01
• Series: Bulletin du Centre de Recherche du Château de Versailles
• Subjects: Louis XIV; Marly; Saint-Germain; Versailles
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/crcv/11956

The system of Marly was different, even antithetical, to that of Versailles: the definitive overall design from the very beginning, the pavilion’s structure, the interweaving of nature and building, lightweight material, a lack of differentiation between apartments, etc. If its origins are in festive decorations – ephemeral pavilions on the large canal in 1674 – the genesis of the device is discussed: a Carthusian or Imperial Roman model? With its painted facades, however, Marly was a clear return to antiquity, as advocated by Jules Hardouin-Mansart. Traditionally seen as a place of retreat and private entertainment for the king, it appears, in the light of more recent studies, as a site of power, different from but complementary to Versailles, a place not of its rhetoric but of real governance in the last years of his reign, a culmination of absolutism whose “machine” constitutes the metaphor.