Explore "The Palace of Versailles" by Esther Singleton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE.
The first palace of Versailles was a hunting-lodge built by Louis XIII. at the angle of the present Rue de la Pompe and Avenue de Saint-Cloud. This he afterwards found too small, and built, in 1627, a moated castle, on the site of a windmill in which he had once taken shelter for the night. The buildings of this _château_ still exist, respected, as the home of his father, in all the alterations of Louis XIV., and they form the centre of the present place. In 1632 Louis XIII. became seigneur of Versailles by purchase from Francois de Gondi, Archbishop of Paris.