# How much would a Versailles-like palace cost today? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 13, 2009, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-would-a-versailles-like-palace-cost-today/485626 "2009-02-13T01:28:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2009, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-would-a-versailles-like-palace-cost-today/485626/21 "2009-02-13T20:35:49Z")
Versailles is amazing-not just the scale of the buildings, but the grounds and gardens. The landscaping work must have involved a work force of thousands-can youimagine all the plantings done by hand? And, the f giant water works at marly-just to feed the fountains! I don’t think the skilled labor you would need (to do an exact copy0 is available today. ---
**Author:** ![Gotterfunken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/58956e/32.png) [@Gotterfunken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gotterfunken)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2009, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-would-a-versailles-like-palace-cost-today/485626/22 "2009-02-13T22:17:48Z")
According to [Leonardo Benevolo](http://books.google.com/books?id=BKZ5FVpmYC8C&pg=PA728&dq=%22louis+xiv%22+versailles+livres#PPA728,M1), > [@](#): > > “Altogether, Louis XIV spent over 200,000,000 _livres_ on his buildings, almost half of it on Versailles…” As far as I can tell, all of the architects, gardeners, and artisans (including workers in glass, mirrors, tapestries, silverwork, etc.) were indeed paid hard currency, through the Minister of Finance, Jean-Baptiste Colbert (who had to deal with the guilds of each respective trade, much like how a modern administrator would have to deal with trade unions). How much of their salary was compensated by the accompanying prestige of working for the king, I don’t know. I’ve spent the last half hour trying to figure out what the relative value of the livre was in the 17th century, but it seems to have fluctuated so much that I can’t nail it down with any certainty. The livre was originally worth 1 pound of silver, as instituted by Charlemagne (way back in the 9th century), but there was a LOT of inflation in 17th-century France. _Had_ the livre remained a constant “1 pound in silver” value, then 100,000,000 livres would be worth $21,904,000,000 today (based on the current market, which has 1 ounce of silver = $13.69 USD). But, again, that figure does NOT take into account what the exact value of the livre was in the 17th century, which I’m sure must have been worth less than a pound of silver. I invite anyone who has a better knowledge of economic history to take a crack at it! ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2009, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-would-a-versailles-like-palace-cost-today/485626/23 "2009-02-14T02:12:05Z")
This may not remain a theoretical question forever: I read about an initiative to rebuild the Palais Royal in Paris (between the Louvre and Place de la Concorde) according to detailed plans recorded before the Revolution, and use it as an adjunct to the Louvre. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2009, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-would-a-versailles-like-palace-cost-today/485626/24 "2009-02-14T03:39:26Z")
> [@Gotterfunken](#): > > …_Had_ the livre remained a constant “1 pound in silver” value, then 100,000,000 livres would be worth $21,904,000,000 today… $21 billion? Not that big a chunk of the stimulus package now being debated on Capitol Hill. Call the new Presidential Palace a jobs-creation program and just watch the votes roll in! ---
**Author:** ![outlierrn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/outlierrn/32/3005_2.png) [@outlierrn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/outlierrn)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2009, 5:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-would-a-versailles-like-palace-cost-today/485626/25 "2009-02-14T05:55:44Z")
personally, I can think of worse ways to spend 21 B$ ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2009, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-would-a-versailles-like-palace-cost-today/485626/26 "2009-02-14T06:20:17Z")
The Spelling Manor, which is probably a close modern equivalent of Versailles, was built in 1991 for $47,000,000. ---
**Author:** ![Gotterfunken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/58956e/32.png) [@Gotterfunken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gotterfunken)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2009, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-would-a-versailles-like-palace-cost-today/485626/27 "2009-02-14T07:31:39Z")
> [@matt\_mcl](#): > > This may not remain a theoretical question forever: I read about an initiative to rebuild the Palais Royal in Paris (between the Louvre and Place de la Concorde) according to detailed plans recorded before the Revolution, and use it as an adjunct to the Louvre. Nitpick: I think the building in question is the Tuileries Palace, which was burned down during the Paris Commune of 1871. The Tuileries was indeed a royal palace, but the name “Palais Royal” usually refers to [this Palais-Royal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palais-Royal), which is still standing. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2009, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-would-a-versailles-like-palace-cost-today/485626/28 "2009-02-14T14:57:56Z")
> [@Gotterfunken](#): > > The Tuileries was indeed a royal palace, but the name “Palais Royal” usually refers to [this Palais-Royal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palais-Royal), which is still standing. Which, despite its name wasn’t a palace, nor royal. The fancy name (actually originally “Palais Cardinal”) was given to attract buyers for the apartments in this newly built (17th century) project. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2009, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-would-a-versailles-like-palace-cost-today/485626/29 "2009-02-14T15:29:20Z")
> [@Gotterfunken](#): > > I invite anyone who has a better knowledge of economic history to take a crack at it! No better knowledge, but I googled, and found that at the end of the reign of Louis XIV, the value of the “livre” was fixed at 0.38 g of gold. So, 100,000,000 “livres” would have been worth 38 metric tons of gold. At today rate, that would be € 885 millions, or $ 1.1 billion or so. However, the relative value of gold probably was vastly different at the time. Expressed in wages, 100 000 000 “livres” would be about 400,000 years of wages for a stonemason in 1695, let say about € 600 millions. Expressed in bread, 650,000 metric tons of bread, or at the current price of bread in France : € 2.5 billions. Expressed in oxes : 7,4 millions of oxes. An extremely vague estimate based on a typical cow’s weight and its price in a slaughterhouse in 2004 results in an equivalent of € 7.5 billions. Basically, depending on what reference I pick, those 100,000,000 “livres” might be worth anything between € 500 millions and € 10 billions. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2009, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-would-a-versailles-like-palace-cost-today/485626/30 "2009-02-14T15:45:44Z")
> [@matt\_mcl](#): > > This may not remain a theoretical question forever: I read about an initiative to rebuild the Palais Royal in Paris (between the Louvre and Place de la Concorde) according to detailed plans recorded before the Revolution, and use it as an adjunct to the Louvre. As a previous poster mentioned it’s the palace of the “Tuileries”, the king’s residence before Versailles was build and after the revolution. However, I’m intrigued by this post, because it’s the first time I hear about rebuilding this palace. Also, it smaller and less luxurious than Versailles. Which makes me think that a royal palace is being rebuilt in Berlin. Looking at the German wikipedia article about it, I guess (I can’t read German) that the estimated cost would be estimated at € 552 billions. Maybe someone could find out the actual price tag, figure out whether it include or not the inside ornamentation, the size of the palace compared to Versailles, and guesstimate a rebuilt cost for Versailles on this basis. ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2009, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-would-a-versailles-like-palace-cost-today/485626/31 "2009-02-14T18:23:37Z")
> [@Gotterfunken](#): > > Nitpick: I think the building in question is the Tuileries Palace, which was burned down during the Paris Commune of 1871. > > The Tuileries was indeed a royal palace, but the name “Palais Royal” usually refers to [this Palais-Royal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palais-Royal), which is still standing. You’re quite right. Sorry, I misremembered. [This is what Wikipedia has to say about the project:](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuileries_Palace) > [@](#): > > Since 2003, a committee in France has been proposing to rebuild the Tuileries Palace. This effort is similar to the proposal of reconstruction of the Berliner Stadtschloss (Berlin City Palace). There are several reasons for rebuilding the Palace of the Tuileries. Ever since the destruction of 1883, the famous perspective of the Champs-Élysées, which ended on the majestic facade of the Tuileries Palace, now ends in the Arc du Carrousel, formerly centered on the Tuileries but now occupying a large empty space. The Louvre, with its pyramid on the one hand and the axis of the Place de la Concorde-Champs-Élysées-Arc de Triomphe on the other, are not aligned on the same axis. > > The Arc du Carrousel fortuitously stands near the intersection of the two axes. The Palace of the Tuileries, which was located at the junction of these two diverging axes, helped to disguise this bending of the axes. Architects argue that the rebuilding of the Tuileries would allow the re-establishment of the harmony of these two different axes. The Tuileries Gardens would also recover their purpose, which was to be a palace garden. > > Also, it is emphasized that the Louvre Museum needs to expand its groundplan to properly display all its collections, and if the Tuileries Palace is rebuilt the Louvre Museum could expand into the rebuilt palace. It is also proposed to rebuild the state apartments of the Second Empire as they stood in 1871. All the plans of the palace and many photographs are still stored in French archives. Furthermore, all the furniture and paintings from the palace survived the 1871 fire because they had been removed from the palace in 1870 at the start of the Franco-Prussian War and stored in secure locations. > > Today, the furniture and paintings are still deposited in storehouses and not on public display due to the lack of space in the Louvre Museum. It is argued that recreating the state apartments of the Tuileries Palace would allow the display of these treasures of the Second Empire style which are currently hidden. [Here](http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2006/08/rebuilding-tuileries-palace.html)is a blog post about it, which emphasizes that the proponents plan to raise the money from private donors rather than use government funds, and [here](http://www.tuileries.org/) is a link to the Comité national pour la reconstruction des Tuileries. ---
**Author:** ![Mops](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mops/32/16494_2.png) [@Mops](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mops)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2009, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-would-a-versailles-like-palace-cost-today/485626/32 "2009-02-14T19:24:17Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > Which makes me think that a royal palace is being rebuilt in Berlin. Looking at the German wikipedia article about it, I guess (I can’t read German) that the estimated cost would be estimated at € 552 billions. Maybe someone could find out the actual price tag, figure out whether it include or not the inside ornamentation, the size of the palace compared to Versailles, and guesstimate a rebuilt cost for Versailles on this basis. The budgeted :rolleyes: cost of € 552 million for the new _Stadtschloss_ is about € 480 million for a modern library/museum building (i.e. without the historic interior), plus about €72 million for three of the four facades built as recreations of the historical (baroque) ones (the fourth facade is going to be modern, as a sop to what seems to be the architectural convention that it is not done to identically rebuild historic buildings). So, not really useful as a comparison to building a _real_ palace. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2009, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-would-a-versailles-like-palace-cost-today/485626/33 "2009-02-14T20:52:55Z")
For those who can’t read German, here’s the English-language Wiki article on the project: [Berlin Palace - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berliner_Stadtschloss) ---
**Author:** ![slaphead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9bcb4/32.png) [@slaphead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slaphead)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2009, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-would-a-versailles-like-palace-cost-today/485626/34 "2009-02-15T15:15:01Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > according to them there aren’t enough qualified craftsmen (gilders, woodcarvers, stonecutters, whatever) in the whole world nowadays to build an identical copy of any of the listed monuments. I have to admit I’m a bit sceptical about this. They don’t exactly number in the millions, but every developed country in the world has a decent number of people who either scrape by on minimum wage (or less) as stonemasons, woodcarvers , blacksmiths or whatever, or who do it as a hobby for free. These types of skills haven’t died out completely, they’ve just moved from the category of ‘everyday job people do to earn a living’ into ‘things people do because they love it’. Heck, even just the people who work in those ‘living museum’ places demonstrating how people made stuff in the old days must add up to a significant number on a global basis. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2009, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-would-a-versailles-like-palace-cost-today/485626/35 "2009-02-15T15:28:42Z")
> [@slaphead](#): > > I have to admit I’m a bit sceptical about this. They don’t exactly number in the millions, but every developed country in the world has a decent number of people who either scrape by on minimum wage (or less) as stonemasons, woodcarvers , blacksmiths or whatever, or who do it as a hobby for free. These types of skills haven’t died out completely, they’ve just moved from the category of ‘everyday job people do to earn a living’ into ‘things people do because they love it’. Heck, even just the people who work in those ‘living museum’ places demonstrating how people made stuff in the old days must add up to a significant number on a global basis. Not to mention that in the case of many things, its **not** necessary to have someone do it by hand. There are machines capable of doing rock and wood carving with greater speed and precision than any human could do. ---
**Author:** ![APB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@APB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/APB)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 11:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-would-a-versailles-like-palace-cost-today/485626/36 "2009-02-17T11:39:28Z")
> [@slaphead](#): > > I have to admit I’m a bit sceptical about this. They don’t exactly number in the millions, but every developed country in the world has a decent number of people who either scrape by on minimum wage (or less) as stonemasons, woodcarvers , blacksmiths or whatever, or who do it as a hobby for free. These types of skills haven’t died out completely, they’ve just moved from the category of ‘everyday job people do to earn a living’ into ‘things people do because they love it’. Heck, even just the people who work in those ‘living museum’ places demonstrating how people made stuff in the old days must add up to a significant number on a global basis. I too am sceptical. The British experience has been that all the major rebuilding projects in recent decades - Hampton Court, Windsor, Uppark - began with fears that there won’t be enough craftsmen and every time this has been proved wrong. The demand always encourages craftsmen to develop the required skills. Also, one must remember that plenty of European palaces have been rebuilt since 1945. The current trend towards rebuilding just the facades, of which the Berlin Stadtschloss is the obvious example, but one could also mention the plans for the Stadtschloss in Potsdam and Herrenhausen in Hanover, are actually rather unusual. There is no shortage of cases where (to varying degrees) interiors have been reconstructed as well. The Charlottenburg in Berlin, the Royal Castle in Warsaw, the Catherine Palace at Tsarskoye Selo and the major landmarks in Dresden all spring to mind. As for Versailles, one might assume that the most expensive, most specialised, least practical and most unfashionable aspect of the decor in the twenty-first century would be the tapestries. But the Gobelins factory is still in business, still part of the Mobilier National and still producing tapestries for the French government. [QUOTE=clairobscur] Which, despite its name wasn’t a palace, nor royal. The fancy name (actually originally “Palais Cardinal”) was given to attract buyers for the apartments in this newly built (17th century) project. [/QUOTE] Not quite. Although part of the complex was indeed a commercial development, I’m sure that several of the ducs d’Orléans would have been appalled by the suggestion that they were not royal and that their residence there was anything less than a palace. ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-would-a-versailles-like-palace-cost-today/485626/37 "2009-02-17T11:56:22Z")
It would cost us 800 production, but we can cut the time in half with marble and an additional 50% with an industrious leader. Okay, seriously, where are we putting this thing? That’s a lot of land to find in the DC area. Wouldn’t it all have to be taken via eminent domain? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-would-a-versailles-like-palace-cost-today/485626.md?page=1)