EVENT DESCRIPTION
Louis XIV loved his Château deeply, but it was for his gardens that he felt the strongest passion. In 1689, the sovereign wrote, in his own hand, a guide entitled “Manière de montrer le jardin de Versailles”, and over the course of his reign, no fewer than seven revised versions of the book were published. If the monarch dreamed of making men turn in his orbit, it was on his paths and groves, which had been reworked ten times, that he first enjoyed casting the power of his rays…
Even before the official installation of power at Versailles in 1682, Louis XIV imagined his first garden as a festive, natural setting for his dreams of absolute grandeur. Victims of the successive redevelopments of the Château and then of the Revolution, there is unfortunately nothing left today of these primitive gardens, which nevertheless left their mark on contemporaries and contributed so much to the universal renown of Versailles.
Today, thanks to immersive technologies, we have the means to make the sun rise again on these vanished spaces. We want to create an experience that takes visitors on a journey of discovery of the first splendours imagined by Louis XIV in the 1660s, following the initial works that saw the Château become the entertainment capital of Europe.
Guided by the monarch, the user will have the immense privilege of seeing and entering three places: the Grotto of Tethys, the Royal Menagerie and the Labyrinth grove: three mythical places conceived as the three acts of a great theatre of water, art and greenery, intended to entertain the Court and to stage, resolutely spectacular and symbolic, the royal absolutism.
