Grand Trianon

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The Grand Trianon, 1678, Jules Hardouin-Mansart, architect

The Grand Trianon was built in Versailles by Louis XIV, and it was designed to be a place where he and his close family could escape from the hectic life of court at the Château of Versailles.

In 1670 Louis XIV purchased Trianon, a hamlet on the outskirts of Versailles. He built a palace called the Porcelain Trianon on his purchased land, and commissioned the architect Louis Le Vau to design it. Louis Le Vau constructed the façade out of porcelain tiles from Delft, which is where the palace got its name from. Louis XIV built the Porcelain Trianon so he could spend time alone in privacy with his mistress Françoise-Athénaïs de Mortemart, the Marquise de Montespan, who Louis XIV liked very much.

In 1687 Louis XIV realised that the porcelain was not strong enough to resist bad weather. He commissioned the architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart to demolish it and build another palace on the same site of a better practicality. Hardouin-Mansart's finished design was twice the size of the Porcelain Trianon and its principle material was marble (very strong), which lead to Louis XIV calling it the Trianon de Marbre (The Marble Trianon). Louis XIV also had another retreat from court life called the Château de Marly and the only way to vist the king at Marly was to receive an invitation which was considered a great honour.

After the demise of the French Monarchy, the Grand Trianon (called so after the Petit Trianon was built nearby by Louis XV in the 1760s) was occupied by Napoleon from 1805 to 1815, who refurnished it in the Empire Style. It is now a popular tourist site at Versailles, and is used by the French President when entertaining foreign officials.

It was also used as a place of negotiating and signing treaties after World War I. In Hungary the word "Trianon" is still used as a symbol of one of their worst national disasters as the country lost two thirds of its territory in the treaty signed here.