My wife has inherited a farm in the country-around 18 acres of flat land! Now, I am in a position to realize my life’s dream!-I want to build a copy of the palace of Versailles! I’m pretty good at carpentry, and I am also OK as a bricklayer. I’ve got a fair amount of money in the bank, so I’m hoping to start construction soon-as soon as I can get approval from the zoning board! My questions:
-where do I get a copy of Louis XIV’s orginal plans?
-do I have to get permission from the French Government?
-what measuring standard did the architect of Versailles use? I assume they didn’t use meters-all of that came in after the French revolution!
-And, how much will it cost me?
I figure that with a few years of hard work, I’ll be able to live like the “Sun King” himself? Of course, I don’t know any royalty-but you are welcom to come to the first ball I hold!
Somewhere in Paris there is a government agency who almost certainly holds the plans. Such attention to record-keeping was a hallmark of the French in that age. (Up in Nova Scotia they are re-creating the fort and the city of Louisbourg–including all the dwellings and all the shops and outbuildings–using copies of the original plans stored in France at the time.)
Provided you can talk your way into getting copies of the plans (big IF, there), they would have no way to prohibit you from building a copy, here. However, I have no idea what protocols you would have to hurdle to get access to the plans. (At a start, go get a job studying architecture at a university. I suspect that Gallic pride might interpose itself between you and the plans if the curators thaought you were simply one more insufferable American looking to pump up his ego by borrowing from the Gloire de France.)
Recreate, shmecreate. Just build yourself a time machine and steal the darn thing.
Well, assuming you want to move into your palace in this lifetime (and therefore won’t be doing all the work yourself), I think you can assume that most of the cost will be labor. Lots and lots of labor. You’ll need trained stone cutters, sculptors, plasterers, bricklayers, glass blowers, painters, copperers, weavers, and a whole bunch of other pretty much lost arts.
When Versaille was built, skilled labor was relatively cheap. Now it’s a rare and valuable commodity.
It took about 40 years to build Versailles. This was pre-heavy machinery/power tools, so I’m guessing it took maybe 10-40,000 laborers, plus artisans. Let’s call it 20K, give them a salary of 50K/year (pretty meager for really skilled artisans, pretty sweet for the grunts who carry the bricks around), looks like 40 billion or so should cover the labor, more or less. You might be able to scrimp a bit here if you allow power tools.
Materials – well, you don’t have to worry about electrical supplies or plumbing (oh, you want toilets?), so basically lots of granite, marble, copper and wood. You’re looking at construction loan in the billions, but how much is anyone’s guess.
Oh, by the way, the park at Versaille is a bit over 200 acres. So if you’re a stickler for accuracy, you’ll have to spring for some surrounding real estate.
I read some years ago an article which gave estimates of how much it would cost to rebuild several major monuments (including Versailles). Though I don’t remember it, the cost seemed enormous to me. And the calculation was assuming that modern materials would be used to make the copy (concrete for the wall, for instance). It stated that building again the real thing would be plainly impossible in our current times due to the lack of skilled craftsmen (stonemasons,cabinet makers, gilders, you name it…)
I don’t know concerning your other questions, but the measurments would probably be in :
-inches and feet (not the same than the british ones, though)
-Toises (6 french feet)
-Perches (18 french feet)
Related to your question, a replica (in concrete, AFAIK) of the saint-Peter Basilique (Rome) has been build in Yamoussoukro (Ivory Coast). According to this site , its cost was more than 65 millions $
I fell in love with Versailles when I first visited it four years ago. Since then, I have been working on my own copy and no one from France has complained.
Quick Tip: Time-Life’s stone masonry books have been invaluable as have some of the gardening manuals.
You don’t say where you are but I certainly don’t want to end up with a cookie-cutter palace. You can start with the original plans but I would appreciate it if you added some original touches so that everyone that is building a replica doesn’t end up with one that is exactly the same.
…Is it true that its construction bankrupted the French Government? The story I heard was that Colbert (Louis’ XIV minister of finance) pleaded with the King to halt the construction, saying that the expenditure would bust the budget. Louis just waved him off. Surely, this enormous expenditure must have had bad effects upon the French nation-probably their army and navy suffered from it. I wonder also if the removal of so many artisans from the labor force (while they were at work on the palace)led to a labor shortage in the rest of the nation.
Well, If I open a charge account at HOME DEPOT, I’ll get 10% off my first order! let’s see-10 million bags of cement, 5 million square feet of plywood,…etc.,etc…
I googled up a website that estimates the construction costs of Versailles at 76 million livres. Another website says France’s national debt at the end of Louis’ XIV reign was 2.5 billion livres, caused mostly by permanent warfare and the armed forces.
One book I happened to have here mentions France’s total national budget in 1785 was 610 million livres, so obviously Versailles, while pretty expensive, didn’t actually bankrupt the treasury.
Btw, I found a calculation from a modern-day construction company saying they’d charge 3.5 billion euros for a copy of the Cheops Pyramid. Construction would take 8 years, but only 85 workers would be employed on the construction site at a time.
But let me ask one question: A 1:1 copy of Versailles would provide plenty of space. What would you use it for?
I found another website (the internet really is one of the greatest inventions of all time 
) giving a few comparisons that could give an impression of monetary value during Louis’ reign:
Annual income of an average bricklayer: 180 livres
Annual income of royal garden designer Le Notre: 14,000 livres
One pound of beef: 0.15 livres
One shirt: 4 livres
Yeah, there would be lots of room for my grandchildren. I could also rent out the space, although the lack of indorr bathrooms might pose a problem.
But then, you can’t have evrything!
I’m envisioning some sort of DoperLand.