HistoryCourt characters

During the 18th century, French kings dedicated increasingly more time to their personal lives to the detriment of their official role as the incarnation of state power. Louis XVI kept his subjects at quite a distance in his exercise of royal sovereignty. On some evenings he would order almost official suppers in the dining room of his Petit Appartement. About sixty guests, including the queen, the members of the royal family, ministers and courtiers would be received here. But the court was smaller and less brilliant than under Louis XIV and Paris supplanted Versailles as the country’s cultural centre.


A learned king
Louis XVI developed his taste for the applied sciences and the technical and mechanical curiosities he collected in the cabinets and laboratories he had built for him close to his apartments. He had workshops for experimenting in physics, mechanics, chemistry, joinery, timepieces and locks, as well as a forge and an electricity gallery. Louis XVI showed keen interest in naval technology and the preparation of exploratory expeditions to new countries. In the 1780s, he chose the navigator Jean-François de Lapérouse to sail around the world. In 1783, the king attended the first aeronautical experiments carried out at Versailles: on 14 September, Etienne de Montgolfier launched a balloon filled with hydrogen and carrying animals in the gondola over the rooftops of Versailles. On 21 November, Pilâtre de Rozier set off from Versailles and completed his first trip by air which lasted 25 minutes.