Gardens of Versailles
The gardens of Versailles occupy part of what was once the Domaine royale de Versailles, the royal demesne of the château of Versailles. Situated to the west of the palace, the gardens cover some 800 hectares of land, much of which is landscaped in the classic French Garden style perfected here by André Le Nôtre.
In 1979, the gardens along with the chateau were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, one of 31 such designations in France.
Grands appartements
As a result of Le Vau’s enveloppe of Louis XIII’s château, the king and the queen had new apartments in the new addition, known at the time as the château neuf. The grands appartements, which are known respectively as the grand appartement du roi and the grand appartement de la reine, occupied the main or principal floor of the château neuf. Le Vau’s design for the state apartments closely followed Italian models of the day, as evidenced by the placement of the apartments on the next floor up from the ground level — the piano nobile — a convention the architect borrowed from 16th and 17th century Italian palace design (Berger, 1986; Verlet, 1985).
