Hall of Mirrors Versailles
— — the afternoon sun, returned seventeen times by glass.
Not only on a wall.
“The Hall of Mirrors: a 73-metre gallery on the first floor of the Château de Versailles. Seventeen tall windows face the gardens to the west; seventeen mirrored arches answer them across the room. Late afternoon is when the gallery does its trick. The low sun reaches in across the parterre and the gilding catches twice. Charles Le Brun painted the ceiling between 1681 and 1684; the names of Louis XIV's campaigns are written across it in Latin. Two pieces of paper that reshaped Europe were signed in this room: the proclamation of the German Empire in 1871, and the Treaty that closed the First World War in 1919. The tour comes through quickly. Some people slow down here.
Hall of Mirrors Versailles, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
The Hall of Mirrors (Galerie des Glaces) runs the length of the central block of the Château de Versailles, about 20 kilometres southwest of Paris in the town of Versailles, Île-de-France. The gallery was built between 1678 and 1684 by the architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart, replacing an older terrace that faced the gardens designed by André Le Nôtre. It is 73 metres long, 10.5 metres wide, and 12.3 metres high. Seventeen mirror-clad arches face seventeen arched windows that look west across the Parterre d'Eau. The Château de Versailles and its grounds have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979.
The room was designed for one thing: to catch and return the afternoon sun. The seventeen arcaded windows face roughly west, so the low light of late day reaches in across the Parterre d'Eau and the gardens, then meets the seventeen mirrored arches on the opposite wall. Each arch holds twenty-one mirror panels, 357 in all, the largest concentration of mirror glass anywhere in seventeenth-century Europe. The Manufacture royale des glaces de miroirs, founded by Jean-Baptiste Colbert under Louis XIV in 1665, was created specifically to break the Venetian monopoly on plate glass. The ceiling, painted by Charles Le Brun between 1681 and 1684, carries thirty allegorical scenes of Louis XIV's reign; the gilded bronze sconces along the piers throw a second, warmer light after dusk.
The Palace of Versailles is open Tuesday through Sunday and closed on Monday. The Hall of Mirrors sits on the State Apartments route on the first floor; the standard Palace ticket includes it. The quietest hour is the first one after opening, when day-trip coaches from Paris are still on the road; by midday the gallery is moving steadily with groups. The RER C train from central Paris reaches the Versailles Château-Rive Gauche station in about 40 minutes, a 10-minute walk from the gates. Photography is permitted without flash. The gallery hosts state functions occasionally and may close at short notice; the Château website posts the schedule. The garden side is best in mid-afternoon, when the sun begins its run across the room.