Editing Versailles, Yvelines (section)

==History==
The name of Versailles appears for the first time in a medieval document dated 1038. In the feudal system of medieval France, the lords of Versailles came directly under the king of France, with no intermediary overlords between them and the king; yet they were not very important lords. At the end of the 11th cenieval castle and the Saint Julien church. Its farming activity and its location on the road from Paris to [[Dreux]] and [[Normandy]] brought prosperity to the village, culminating at the end of the 13th century, the so-called "century of [[Louis IX of France|Saint Louis]]", famous for the prosperity of northern France and the building of [[Gothic architecture|Gothic]] cathedrals. The 14th century brought the [[Black Death]] and the [[Hundred Years' War]], and with it death and destruction. At the end of the Hundred Years' War in the 15th century, the village started to recover, with a population of only 100 inhabitants.

In 1561, [[Martial de Loménie]], secretary of state for finances under King [[Charles IX of France|Charles IX]], became lord of Versailles. He obtained permission to establish four annual fairs and a weekly market on Thursdays. The population of Versailles was 500 inhabitants. Martial de Loménie was murdered during the [[St. Bartholomew's Day massacre]] (24 August 1572). In 1575, [[Albert de Gondi]], a man from [[Florence]] who had come to France with [[Catherine de' Medici]], bought the [[Manorialism|seigneury]] of Versailles.

===Louis XIII===
[[File:Louis XIIIval grace.jpg|thumb|200px|right|upright|[[Louis XIII]] built the original hunting lodge that would become the [[Palace of Versailles]] under his son and successor Louis XIV]]
Henceforth Versailles was the possession of the [[Gondi family]], a family of wealthy and influential parliamentarians at the ''[[Parlement]]'' of Paris. Several times during the 1610s, the de Gondis invited King [[Louis XIII]] to hunt in the large forests around Versailles. In 1622, the king purchased a parcel of forest for his private hunting. In 1624, he acquired more and entrusted [[Philibert Le Roy]] with the construction of a small hunting lodge of red bricks and stone with a slate roof. In 1632, the king bought the totality of the land and seigneury of Versailles from [[Jean-François de Gondi]]. The hunting lodge was enlarged to the size of a small château between 1632 and 1634.

At the death of Louis XIII, in 1643, the village had 1,000 inhabitants.

This small château was the site of one of the historical events that took place during the reign of Louis XIII, on 10 November 1630, when, on the [[Day of the Dupes]], the party of the queen mother was defeated and [[Cardinal Richelieu|Richelieu]] was confirmed as Prime minister.

===Louis XIV===
King [[Louis XIV]], son of Louis XIII, was only four years old when his father died. It was 20 years later, in 1661, when Louis XIV commenced his personal reign, that the young king showed interest in Versailles. The idea of leaving Paris, where, as a child, he had experienced first-hand the insurrection of the [[Fronde]], had never left him. Louis XIV commissioned his architect [[Le Vau]] and his landscape architect [[Le Nôtre]] to transform the castle of his father, as well as the park, in order to accommodate the court. In 1678, after the [[Treaty of Nijmegen]], the king decided that the court and the government would be established permanently in Versailles, which happened on 6 May 1682.

At the same time, a new city was emerging from the ground, resulting from an ingenious decree of the king dated 22 May 1671, whereby the king authorized anyone to acquire a lot in the new city for free. There were only two conditions to acquire a lot: 1- a token tax of 5 shillings (''5 sols'') per arpent of land should be paid every year ($0.03 per {{convert|1000|sqft|m2|abbr=on}} per year in 2005 US dollars); 2- a house should be built on the lot according to the plans and models established by the ''Surintendant des [[Bâtiments du Roi]]'' (architect in chief of the royal demesne). The plans provided for a city built symmetrically with respect to the ''Avenue de Paris'' (which starts from the entrance of the castle). The roofs of the buildings and houses of the new city were not to exceed the level of the Marble Courtyard, at the entrance of the castle (built above a hill dominating the city), so that the perspective from the windows of the castle would not be obstructed.

The old village and the Saint Julien church were demolished to make room for buildings housing the administrative services managing the daily life in the castle. On both sides of the ''Avenue de Paris'' were built the Notre-Dame neighbourhood and the Saint-Louis neighbourhood, with new large churches, markets, and aristocratic mansions, all built in a very homogeneous style according to the models established by the ''Surintendant des Bâtiments du Roi''. Versailles was a vast construction site for many years. Little by little came to Versailles all those who needed or desired to live close to the maximum power. At the death of the Sun King in 1715, the village of Versailles had turned into a city of approximately 30,000 inhabitants.

[[File:Map of Versailles in 1789 by William R Shepherd (died 1934).jpg|thumb|300px|right|Versailles in 1789.]]

===Louis XV and Louis XVI===
When the court of King [[Louis XV]] returned to Versailles in 1722, the city had 24,000 inhabitants. With the reign of Louis XV, Versailles grew even further. Versailles was the capital of the most powerful kingdom in Europe, and the whole of Europe admired its new architecture and design trends. Soon enough, the strict building rules decided under Louis XIV were not respected anymore, real estate speculation flourished, and the lots that had been given for free under Louis XIV were now on the market for hefty prices. By 1744, the population reached 37,000 inhabitants. The cityscape changed considerably under kings Louis XV and [[Louis XVI]]. Buildings were now taller. King Louis XV built a Ministry of War, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs (where the [[Treaty of Paris (1783)]] ending the [[American Revolutionary War]] was signed in 1783 with the United Kingdom), and a Ministry of the Navy. By 1789, the population had reached 60,000 inhabitants,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://gallica.bnf.fr/document?O=N024666 |title=Volume 31 (on page 882) |author=La Grande Encyclopédie |year=1902 |access-date=20 June 2007 |author-link=La Grande Encyclopédie |language=fr}}</ref> and Versailles was now the seventh or eighth-largest city in France, and one of the largest cities in Europe.

===French Revolution===
Seat of political power, Versailles naturally became the cradle of the [[French Revolution]]. The [[Estates-General of 1789|Estates-General]] met in Versailles on 5 May 1789. The members of the Third Estate took the [[Tennis Court Oath]] on 20 June 1789, and the [[National Constituent Assembly (France)|National Constituent Assembly]] abolished [[feudalism]] on 4 August 1789. Eventually, on 5 and 6 October 1789, a crowd of women joined by some members of the national guard from Paris invaded the castle to protest bread prices and forced the royal family to move to Paris. The National Constituent Assembly followed the king to Paris soon afterwards, and Versailles lost its role as capital city. During this turbulent time, [[Jean-François Coste (Physician)|Jean-François Coste]], who had also been the chief physician of the King's Armies, was appointed mayor of Versailles.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lane |first=John E. (John Edward) |url=http://archive.org/details/b30626870 |title=Jean-Francois Coste: chief physician of the French expeditionary forces in the American revolution |date=1928 |publisher=[Somerville, N.J.] ; [New York city] : [The American historical society, inc.] |others=Wellcome Library}}</ref>

From then on, Versailles lost a good deal of its inhabitants. From 60,000, the population had declined to 26,974 inhabitants by 1806.<ref name=ehess/> The castle, stripped of its furniture and ornaments during the Revolution, was left abandoned, with only [[Napoleon]] briefly staying one night there and then leaving the castle for good. [[Louis-Philippe]], who took the throne in the [[July Revolution]] of 1830, transformed the palace into a National Museum dedicated to "all the glories of France" in 1837. Versailles had become a sleepy town, a place of pilgrimage for those nostalgic for the old monarchy.

===19th century to the present day===
The [[Franco-Prussian War]] of 1870 put Versailles in the limelight again. On 18 January 1871, the victorious Germans proclaimed the king of [[Kingdom of Prussia|Prussia]], [[Wilhelm I]], emperor of [[Empire of Germany|Germany]] in the very [[Hall of Mirrors]] of the castle, in an attempt to take revenge for the conquests of Louis XIV two centuries earlier. Then in March of the same year, following the insurrection of the [[Paris Commune]], the [[French Third Republic]] government under [[Adolphe Thiers|Thiers]] relocated to Versailles, and from there directed the military suppression of the insurrection.

Restoration of a monarchy almost occurred in 1873, with parliament offering the crown to [[Henri, comte de Chambord]], but his refusal to accept the [[Flag of France|tricolour flag]] that had been adopted during the Revolution made the restoration of monarchy impossible for the time being. Versailles became again the political centre of France, full of buzz and rumours, with its population briefly peaking at 61,686 in 1872,<ref name=ehess /> matching the record level of population reached on the eve of the French Revolution 83 years earlier. Eventually, however, left-wing republicans won a string of parliamentary elections, defeating the parties supporting a restoration of the monarchy, and the new majority decided to relocate the government to Paris in November 1879. Versailles then experienced a new population setback (48,324 inhabitants at the 1881 census).<ref name=ehess /> After that, Versailles never again functioned as the seat of the capital of France, but the presence of the [[National Assembly (France)|French Parliament]] there in the 1870s left a vast hall, built in one aisle of the palace, which the French Parliament uses when it meets in [[Congress of the French Parliament|Congress]] to amend the French Constitution, as well as when the [[President of France]] addresses the two chambers of the French Parliament.

[[File:Versailles Cour Royale Sud.jpg|thumb|300px|right|The [[Château de Versailles]] (Pavillon Dufour) in the spring of 2006.]]
Only in 1911 did Versailles definitely recover its level of population of 1789, with 60,458 inhabitants at the 1911 census.<ref name=ehess /> In 1919, at the end of the First World War, Versailles came into the limelight again as the [[Treaty of Versailles|various treaties]] ending the war were signed in the castle proper and in the [[Grand Trianon]]. After 1919, as the suburbs of Paris continued to expand, Versailles was absorbed by the urban area of Paris and the city experienced a strong demographic and economic growth, turning it into a large suburban city of the metropolitan area of Paris. The role of Versailles as an administrative and judicial centre has been reinforced in the 1960s and 1970s, and somehow Versailles has become the main centre of the western suburbs of Paris.

In the present times, the centre of the town has kept its very bourgeois atmosphere, while more middle-class neighbourhoods have developed around the train stations and on the outskirts of the city. Versailles is a chic suburb of Paris, well linked with the centre of Paris by several train lines. However, the city is extremely compartmentalized, divided by large avenues inherited from the monarchy which create the impression of several small cities ignoring each other. Versailles was never an industrial city, even though there are a few chemical and food-processing plants. Essentially, Versailles is a place of services, such as public administration, tourism, [[business]] congresses, and festivals. From 1951 until France's withdrawal from the NATO unified command in 1966, nearby [[Rocquencourt, Yvelines|Rocquencourt]] functioned as the site for [[SHAPE]]. Versailles is an important military centre, with several units and training schools headquartered at the [[Satory]] military base, which hosted the headquarters of the famed [[2nd Armored Division (France)|2nd French Armored Division]] until 1999, and where a military exhibition is organized{{by whom|date=August 2019}} annually.