Twenty-five years of work
Le Nôtre's work at Versailles spanned 25 long years, during which the gardens kept growing in size and in splendor. To understand the plans drawn up for them, one has to grasp the ambition of the young Sun King. Seeking a world of pleasure and luxury where he and his court could flourish, he chose the castle of his father, Louis XIII. Although his finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert wanted to demolish everything, the young king preferred to integrate the old building with the new.
The art of perspective and illusion
Le Nôtre is celebrated for the finesse of his formal flowerbed compositions and for optical illusions without precedent. His use of large, sweeping perspectives opens up impressive panoramas, yet in reality it is nearly impossible to take in the whole domain at once, a fact that bears witness to his talent. Thanks to a series of flat parterres, the gardens reveal themselves with every step, the landscape unfolding gradually like a succession of theater scenes that together tell a complete story.
The parterres and the Grand Canal
Two achievements above all carried Le Nôtre's name into history: the Embroidery parterres and the Grand Canal. The embroidery parterre, a formal flowerbed garden, is a theme specific to French gardening, while the Grand Canal gave the domain its great central axis of water. Together they define the character of the gardens and remain among the most admired features of Versailles.
