thought for the day . . . France's Versailles

The next perhaps really great cultural outpouring, where great architecture is made, embroidered with art(and science), after the Venicians(and Italy in general from the 1400/1500's . . . the famous Italian Renaissance), is France.

The cultural heritage of France goes back further than the Renaissance Italy actually. As I've pointed out many times in this blog, the so called 'dark ages' was split between the approximately five hundred years after the fall of Rome to a thousand A.D. when the translations of Spanish Arab books were made.  Those of course turned out to be ancient Greek mathematical science(and philosophy) books.  Really, the French were in on it first.  They were right there - right above Spain.

I think I'll go ahead and post some Alhambra pictures again here; this can never be shown enough!

This is it from the outside; looks like some square brutal fortress as Jacob Bronowski puts it.  But on the inside!

The Alhambra and some other Arab architecture was before the great French 'Gothic' cathedrals.  They came after the translations of the Spanish Arab texts of 1060 A.D.

Here's an early French Gothic cathedral.  Some say the first. It's history goes back to Roman times.  It's placed on top of roman ruins.

I can't help posting this picture of original bells placed in view.  I'm guessing the French Gothic cathedrals made these hugh bells ringing at certain times famous

As James Burke in his Connections, episode 3 points out, tip the bell over, put in some gunpowder taken from the Chinese, and you have a cannon . . .

Speeding right along through history, past all the Italian Renaisance and other history, to about 1680 France's Versailles. I don't claim to know everything about this place, but I found this French picture book of Versailles, thumbed through it, and found some interesting things!

Louis the XIV seemed to consider himself the 'sun king.' I don't know about reading to much into that, but it points to some of my discoveries in this little book.

Here's the Gabriel wing, which is just a small part of the whole of Versailles.

Here's the inside of one of those buildings,

Here's the inside of another part!

There's more cathedrals built in to Versailles . . .

Ah, here we go, the Hercules room!

The Venus room . . .

and the Mercury room,

Well, it's called the Mercury Salon

The Diana room . . . in Greek mythology, that's Apollo's sister; yes, that's what I'm getting at!

Made out of pure marble

The Apollo room,

The Mars room,

And of course, there's tons of other goodies,

Here's the famous hall of mirrors,

The Hall of battles dedicated to Democracy really,

The Royal Opera,

There's even Marie Antoinettes theater,

I wasn't able to find everything, and of course, I'm don't know about or am even going to show everything.  One curiosity is after the French built their Versailles, the Russians had to have one of their own. See their Winter palace alone.

Here's the King and Queens beds of Versailles,