Versailles Rediscovered: The Sun King's Vanished Palace

Versailles : Le Palais retrouvé du Roi Soleil

Overview

Based on the latest technological and scientific advances, this documentary explores the palace's architectural past to resurrect Louis XIV's vanished Versailles. Versailles was an ongoing building site at the time of Louis XIV and continued to be transformed by its successive occupants later on. The Versailles we know today only vaguely resembles the Versailles of the Sun King. Most of its original features and apartments no longer exist. Thanks to the digitisation of thousands of plans, a team of scientists takes us back in time to explore this forgotten past in a new way, through a large-scale reconstruction project to bring back the Versailles of Louis XIV as he designed it, according to his requirements and dreams.

Production

Gedeon Programmes, CNRS Images, ARTE, NHK, Planète+, LRT, Česká televize, TV5 Monde