The Hall of Mirrors, a visit that clarifies

La Galerie des Glaces, une visite qui clarifie

Hall of Mirrors

You've come at last to the legendary Hall of Mirrors. This was the heart of French civilization in the last decades of the Sun King's reign (1680's-1715). Later the salons of Paris became more influential, a sign of the change that culminated with the Revolution -- but that is another story. Let's remain in the Sun King's time.

But since we're also analyzing how mass tourism operates, let's compare the king's priorities with those of the Château administration. Here is its web page:

http://en.chateauversailles.fr/discover-estate/the-palace/the-palace/the-hall-of-mirrors
  

The most obvious objection: the write-up does not say that the giant windows oblige gazing out on the perspective (if you missed the page that explains its importance and gives a reason for the administration's ignoring it, please scroll up).

Another objection: the writer lists facts, without explaining why they matter. With one exception: that the purpose of the 337 mirrors is to show economic success. Of course they reveal that, but aristocrats shunned such parvenu ostentation. The mirrors' magnify light -- this is the Sun King's palace.

Mirrors reflect light from windows on the right (by Michel Leloir, 1931)

The facts are meaningless, making the text almost unreadably boring. An anecdote lightens it -- that the king had the secret of mirror-making "stolen" from Venice. Such information does lighten the text, but taken out out of context it is as trival as the rest of the data. That would change had the writer explained that stealing the secret was part of Louis's bringing luxury production to France -- under his control. He kept it out of the hands of private entrepreneurs, slowing down the rise of a class that might challenge the ruling elite. (As indeed they eventually did.)

The point is important because it illustrates one of the universal reasons for the importance of chiefs and kings. They become stronger as an economy grows, as a means of asserting authority over rising interests. That need explains why, for example, a 19th-century explorer of Bornu (in northern Nigeria) expresses astonishment at the immense amount of food the ruler gives his expedition:* the gift means that he won't be tempted to buy his supplies from independent producers. The idea is to keep such interests (both producers and traders) under control. The illustration below (from another explorer's narrative) shows the same idea.

Royal grip on commercial interests

Yet a third objection: pointless erudition. Getting back to the data, what is the interest of, for example, "Rance pilasters"? For that matter, what are they? What was the Peace of Nijmegen"? Who today has even heard of that treaty? Or cares if they have heard of it? 

Is this kind of information as aimless as it seems?

Mass tourism's goal is to make money. For that it creates "products" that visitors consume: Versailles is an example. To appeal to a public that is wide, diverse and  inevitably uninformed, these products address themselves to modern assumptions, regardless of what their builders intended. Even if the Château had no practical reason for dismissing the perspective, its website wouldn't dwell on it. It was Louis's priority, not ours.

But in that case, visitors may as well look at the sites by themselves. Explanations have no purpose. Yet they help justify entry fees and encourage earphone rentals (which usually cost extra, as they did here until recently) and purchase of glossy booklets. Hence the data. As for arcane stuff thrown in as if it were common knowledge, it makes the public feel ignorant and humble, unlikely to question. Were someone to say "What the heck are Rance columns?" it would be like the little boy saying "The emperor has no clothes!" But that almost never happens. Visitors know they'll forget such information and are deeply bored by it, but many suppose that it's what "doing" a site requires.

So they check off the monument on their list of things to see and mass tourism rakes in the cash.

In the Hall of Mirrors,
please turn off the earphones!

They'll take your attention away from simply looking at this legendary site. 
 

Let nothing come between this masterpiece and you.

Behold the grandeur.

Versailles is meant to stupefy. It does so -- and then some.

Let the Sun King take over.

Louis XIV, by Charles Le Brun, in the Hall of Mirrors

* Hugh Clapperton and Richard Lander, Narrative of a Second Expedition to the Interior of Africa, 1827.

Credits: Hall of Mirrors / Château website; king and traders / engraving from an 18th-century narrative of exploration in Africa, kindly supplied by Thierry Quintin-Lamothe, lecturer on the spice trade; drawing / Harald Wolff