King Louis XIV

Residence 1

📍Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Place du Château Charles de Gaulle, 78100 Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France

“I was born at Saint-Germain-en-Laye on the fifth of September 1638, after twenty-three years during which my parents had produced no heir. The nation called me the Dieu-Donné — the God-given — and I grew up understanding that the throne of France existed to be held at any cost. When the Fronde rebellion erupted in 1648 and the Paris mob entered the Palais Royal at night to verify I was still present, I was ten years old and I pretended to sleep while they looked at me by torchlight. I never forgot it. A king who can be inspected by his own mob has already lost. Saint-Germain was where I learned the pleasures of power — the hunt, the court, the performance of majesty — before Versailles became the permanent architectural answer to every question the Fronde had asked about who truly governed France. I moved the court in 1682. I never came back.”

Sources: Wikipedia: Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye

Residence 2

📍Place d'Armes, 78000 Versailles, France

“I moved the court from Paris deliberately. A king surrounded by idle nobles in the capital is vulnerable; a king whose nobles must come to him, must petition for apartments at Versailles, holds every thread. I rose each morning before three thousand courtiers, ate before an audience, and governed the greatest kingdom in Europe from these gilded rooms. The palace was my political instrument as much as my home.”

Sources: Wikipedia: Louis XIV