The view from the King’s Pavilion at the Royal Estate of Marly is forlorn. Just over four miles from the relentless restoration of Versailles, all that’s left of what was once Louis XIV’s most precious secondary residence is fragments: a cobblestone ramp framed by a stone wall, an outline of a pleasure palace, an alignment of naked trees, a small trooping of trimmed evergreens, water basins without ornaments—scarcely a hint of splendor.

Some of my sense of desolation undoubtedly comes from visiting in the grey-brown damp of winter. I imagine that in warmer, drier seasons one could spend a wonderful morning here playing Frisbee with a Labrador or golden retriever. But I don’t have one.

Still, I’m glad that I’ve come, even in January and despite the complication of getting here. I’ve come to understand the rise and fall of Marly.

The Royal Estate of Marly, located on the edge of the town of Marly-le-Roi, is only 12 miles west of Paris, but it takes an abundance of historical curiosity and a suburban adventure to get you here. Worth it? Not worth it? You be the judge. The bleak landscape certainly has atmosphere. Ruins put grandeur in perspective. And the little museum that recently opened just within the entrance to the estate tells of Marley’s heyday. Other evidence of Marly’s splendor can be seen in Paris, as I’ll explain later. First some background.

Marly is situated nearly midway between Versailles to the south and Saint-Germain-en-Laye to the north. Saint-Germain-en-Laye has a much older royal castle. Louis XIV was born there in 1638. He was born in the “new” chateau of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, to be precise, while only the “old” chateau remains today. By the mid-point in his adult reign, the king had three major residences within a short distance: Versailles, Marly and Saint Germain. Add to those the royal residences of the Tuileries and the Louvre in Paris. Also noted on this map is the location of writer Alexandre Dumas’s Château de Monte Cristo.

The Creation of Marly

King since the age of 4 years and 8 months, Louis XIV took control of the reins of power at age 23, in 1661. He immediately set about developing the palace of Versailles. In 1682, after two decades of construction and landscaping, he declared Versailles the official seat of the monarchy. Though intense construction would continue at Versailles after 1682, Louis XIV simultaneously then set his sights on developing the more private residence of Marly, an easy carriage-ride away.

Corresponding with this period, in 1683, Marie-Theresa, his queen, died, and several months later, Louis married Madame de Maintenon in secret.

As with Versailles, Louis XIV gave much input to plans for the pleasure palace of Marly and to its gardens, basins and fountains. As at Versailles, he followed the construction closely. The lead architect was Jules-Hardouin Mansart, who also marked the latter decades of the 17th century with such monumental works as the Hall of Mirrors, among other developments, at Versailles and the Dome of the Invalides and Place Vendome in Paris. Charles Le Brun, who provided the decorative elements for the Hall of Mirrors, among many other rooms at Versailles, also had a hand in decorating Marly. However, Marly’s brilliance was not of the in-your-face kind as at Versailles but of the luxuriant get-away kind.

Louis first stayed at Marly in 1686, and from then until his death in 1715 this was his primary second home. While the king reveled in the glitz and glamour and omnipresent public at Versailles, he enjoyed frequent breaks at Marly, sojourning at the estate on average every couple of weeks for several days. Here he would spend time with the royal family and with Madame de Maintenon and a relatively limited number of courtiers. The etiquette and the dress code at Marly were more relaxed than at Versailles. “Sire, Marly,” courtiers would plead to the king to allow them to counted among the lucky few. In his final years he would come more often and for longer stays, spending more than one third of the year at Marly.

Garden walks, card games, lawn games and fairground-type rides were among the royal pastimes and especially hunting in the surrounding forest, before his health declined.

Unlike Versailles and other palaces and castles built as a single structure, the constructions on the estate of Marly had a fragmented layout. The king’s pavilion, containing a central reception area and apartments for the royal family, was surrounded by a constellation of 12 smaller pavilions for selects guests.

The Machine of Marly

The pavilions of Marly have been largely forgotten, other than a few glimpses in the Marly Museum. When the history of Marly is evoked today, it’s less to speak of the estate than of its sculpted horses, now in Paris, and its Machine, long gone.

The Machine of Marly was a massive engineering project involving a complex array of pumps and lifts that carried water from the Seine River to feed the insatiable thirst of the fountains and basins first at Marly then also at Versailles. Though pumped from the Seine only two miles away in the town of Bougival, the great feat was to use the force of the river to lift water 531 feet so as to carry it over the hillside and onto an aqueduct that sloped gradually toward Marly, then to Versailles. It was late-17th-century engineering at its finest and likely noisiest.

The quantity of water supplies by the Machine allowed for the operation of cascading fountains at Marly, including one called “The River” that flowed toward the royal pavilion before feeding lower fountains, basins and ponds within the estate’s formal gardens and precisely edged groves. Though in constant need of repair, the Machine as it was more or less designed operated until the early 19th century, when a steam engine was built as its energy source. That was then replaced by a hydraulic process later in the century. Scant evidence of the complex can be seen today by the Seine, where the most visible remnant is the 19th-century pumping station and the rows of trees up the hill that follow the former path along which the water was carried.

A display in the museum on the edge of the estate demonstrates how the Machine operated.

The Horses of Marly

Among the ponds fed by the water network was the Horse Pond or Drinking Pool. At its entrance stood two majestic marble equestrian statues: Mercury Riding Pegasus and Fame Riding Pegasus. They are the work of sculptor Antoine Coysevox in 1702. Several years after Louis XIV’s death in 1715, Coysevox’s horses were placed in the royal garden of the Tuileries in Paris.

Marly was also used by the Louis XIV’s successors, the Fifteenth and Sixteenth of that name, though much less so. Louis XV showed enough interest in Marly to order some restoration work and to stay here occasionally but not enough to detract from the attention he paid to other more modern royal playgrounds that he developed in the middle of the 18th century. Scoring an invitation during Louis XV’s time was easier for courtiers. In place of the equestrian statues of Coysevox in the Tuileries, the king commissioned Guillaume Coustou the Elder, Coysevox’s nephew, to create another pair, called Horses Restrained by a Groom. Both sets are referred to as the Horses of Marly, though the term is particularly used in speaking of Coustou’s pair. Created in created in 1745, these masterpieces of the Rococo period are among the most famous of 18th-century French sculptures. (Coustou’s brother Nicolas also created sculptures for Marly.)

Louis XVI was still less involved in the royal estate of Marly than his predecessor. Nevertheless, he did visit. His final stay took place just three weeks before the storming of the Bastille.

The Marly Courtyard at the Louvre

With the fall of the monarchy, Marly, like Versailles, become property of the French Republic. Statuary, tapestries and furnishings were brought to Paris for public exhibition. Coustou’s horses were placed at the entrance to the Champs-Elysées. Copies stand there today, as the originals have since been brought into the Louvre. So have Coysevox’s.

After visiting the Royal Estate of Marly to feel its absence and to learn its history, I’ve come to the Louvre to admire samplings of that finery. There, in what is now called the Marly Courtyard, Coustou’s horses rear above a collection of brilliant sculptural work from the vanished gardens. As first-time visitors crush toward the must-sees in the Louvre’s Denon (southern) and Sully (eastern) wings, I take the northern escalator into the Richelieu Wing. In the glass covered courtyard, allowing for natural lighting, stands an impressive array of the statuary originally made for Marly. Coustou’s horses are staged in the courtyard as theatrically as the Winged Victory of Samothrace in the opposite wing of the museum, while Coysevox’s horses take flight with Mercury and Fame behind them, and other exquisite works commissioned by Louis XIV toward the end of his reign further display choice samples of the splendor that was Marly.

See this video of the Marly Courtyard produced by the Louvre.

The Dismantling of Marly

While prime pieces of marble artistry were brought to Paris, the furnishings of Marly were sold off by the State. Woodwork was cut up and sold. And in 1799 the estate of Marly itself was sold.

Napoleon bought back the Marly property for the state in 1811. By then the buildings had for the most part been dismantled and sold for scrap. The emperor wasn’t about to rehabilitate a Bourbon adobe anyway. What attracted him to Marly was its forest, prime territory for hunting. The estate therefore became an imperial hunting ground, then after the fall of the Empire a royal hunting ground, and eventually a presidential hunting ground. It remained that way until 2009. Bikers, hikers and Sunday strollers now take to the Forest of Marly.

The Estate of Marly (though not the museum) is now administratively joined with the Estate of Versailles, making for a thought-provoking contrast between the two: on the one hand, the eye-popping views, budget, crowds and commerce of an international bucket-lister; on the other, the ghostly reminder of royal pedigree at what is now essentially a local park and extensive woods.

The Museum of the Royal Estate of Marly

Operated by the local municipality, the museum is dedicated to the history of the estate. Several original paintings and prints and pieces of furniture provide slight glimpses of the estate’s past, but the interest of the museum isn’t so much its historical artefacts as the telling of the history of Marly through its displays, including one that explains the functioning of the Machine. Explanatory notes are only in French for now. Notices in English are planned for the end of the year. Whether you speak French or not, a guide can truly help draw you into the creation and life of this nearly forgotten royal residence. See the museum’s website for guided tour possibilities or to inquire for a private tour.

Musée du Domaine Royal de Marly (Museum of the Royal Estate of Marly), 1 Grille royale – Parc de Marly, 78160 Marly-le-Roi. 7€, free for children under 12. Closed Monday and Tuesday. See website for precise opening times.

Getting to the Estate of Marly

As noted earlier, visiting the Estate of Marly is a suburban adventure, one best reserved for those with an abundance of historical curiosity and a willingness to confront the logistics of navigating the loops of the Seine to the west of Paris.

Consider combining it with other sites in the area, particularly Saint-Germain-en-Laye to the north and the Chateau de Monte Cristo (see below) in Port-Marly, between Marly and Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Including Versailles is an alternative approach due to its proximity both geographical and historical, though I imagine that anyone curious about Marly has already visited Versailles.

Setting aside Versailles then, consider three possibilities ways of a day involving a visit to Marly. All require a GPS or detailed map.

1. From Paris by train

From Paris’s Saint Lazare Station, take the train to the Louveciennes Station, a ride of about 45 minutes. From there it’s a 20-minute (1-mile) walk to the museum, which is at the entrance to Royal Estate of Marly, whose ghosts can then be visited on a stroll. Leaving the estate, you might then take a 30-minute (under 2-mile) walk to the Seine. Not the most beautiful walk either coming or going, though you can pass by the wall surrounding the Chateau de Madame de Barry, 6 chemin de la Machine, now a private property. Madame de Barry was Louis XV’s “favorite” (i.e. official mistress) in the final years of his life. The modest chateau was a gift from the king which she then improved. After the king’s death, and followed by her brief exile to a convent, she lived here from 1776 until the guillotine caught up with her in 1793—a pretty good run. You might time your day to have lunch by the river at La Maison Louveciennes, 2 Quai Conti, 78430 Louveciennes. Return to Paris by train or RER.

2. Exploring the western suburbs by car

You can plan a full day exploring Paris’s western suburbs by a taxi or a car service, if you don’t have your own car.

One possible itinerary if setting out from Paris is to first take the RER (suburban train), line A, to Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a 40-minute ride from the center of capital. Visit the castle and its gardens, followed by lunch in town, then take a taxi or car service to the Estate of Marly to visit the museum and ghostly portion nearby. Then take a taxi (though one will not spontaneously appear outside the gates of Marly) or a car service to Monte Cristo. You might ask the driver to take you past the scant remnant of the Machine of Marly by the Seine along the way. Then a taxi or car service (or a 30-minute walk) back to Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

The Château de Monte Cristo isn’t actually a chateau but rather a large house built in the 1840s to resemble a small castle for the writer Alexandre Dumas, who named it after one of his most famous books and decorated it to his own glory. The house and the smaller castle-like outbuilding that he had built on the property to serve as his writing room are now dedicated to his memory, though he didn’t reside here long. After living high on the hog here for less than two years, a lack of funds led him to sell the property in 1848.

3. Marly and Saint-Germain-en-Laye on a biking day

If you’re into biking—and you needn’t be a long-distance cyclist for this—my top choice for visiting Marly would be by bike. Weather permitting, of course. The 130-acre royal estate is at the edge of the nearly 5000 acres of the Forest of Marly, which is separated by only a mile from the nearly 9000 acres of the Forest of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Visited together, a leisurely day of cycling and touring can include both forests, with stops at the Museum and Estate of Marly at the edge of the one forest and at the Castle of Saint-Germain-en-Laye near the edge of the other.

If coming from Paris, take RER A to Saint-Germain-en-Laye, whether bringing a bike from Paris (your own or a rental) or renting one in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. You can take a bike on the RER A from Paris during the week outside of rush hour, meaning other than 6:30-9:30am and 4:30-730pm, as well anytime on weekends and holidays. In Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Cyclou rents bikes from the edge of the forest, near the swimming pool about 500 yards from the chateau up Avenue des Loges, though with limited weekday opening times (see their site for details). Also see Bikook for e-bike rental.

Begin by visiting the Castle of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, which houses the National Archeology Museum, and the castle gardens. Then bike at your own rhythm for a couple of hours through the two forests before visiting the Museum and Estate of Marly. You’ll use your GPS or a biking app to navigate through the forests. Route des Princesses is the mile-long stretch of non-forest biking between the two. From Marly it’s possible to bike down to the Seine and/or to the Chateau de Monte-Cristo before returning to Saint-Germain. But that involves street biking, so you might want to just keep this as a forest biking day and return the way that you came.

The Saint Germain Tourist Office, a 3-minute walk from the RER station, 3 rue Henri IV, provides information about the town and about surrounding towns along the nearby loops in the Seine, including Marly-le-Roi. This area is located within the department of Yvelines, which includes the western and southwestern suburbs of Paris.

Château Louis XIV

As you travel about in these western suburbs you might not see the wealth, but it’s there. For example, you won’t be seeing Château Louis XIV unless you’re in the habit of hanging out with Saudi royalty. It’s near Marly, in the town of Louveciennes, in the direction of Versailles. Château Louis XIV is a contemporary echo of Marly and Versailles. It was built on a 57-acre property in 2012 by Emad Khashoggi (read: big money from the Middle East further developed in Europe) as a high-tech version of a 17th-century-style chateau. Three years later, the property reportedly sold for 275 million euros, reportedly to the crown prince of the Saudi kingdom. Press reports at the time called it the most expensive private property in the world.

© 2020, Gary Lee Kraut

The post The Royal Estate of Marly: Absence, History and Splendor appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

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Little by little over the coming decade Paris as we think of it will spread out from the confines of its peripheral boulevards and embrace its neighboring suburbs in the creation of Grand Paris, Greater Paris.

The umbrella project is still in its debating stage with various possible plans being drawn up and discussed across municipal borders, in Paris City Hall, and in the president’s palace, yet already various lights of the future constellation of Greater Paris are being designed. Some have already been illuminated. Case in point: Boulogne-Billancourt, a comfortable southwestern suburb of Paris, between the Seine and the Bois de Boulogne, accessible by metro at the end of lines 10 and 9.

The City of Light is still far from being thought of as the Region of Light, nevertheless Boulogne-Billancourt is well on its way to being a full-fledged part of Greater Paris. One small light was switched on this week with the opening of the Paul Belmondo Museum in Boulogne-Billancourt.

The museum, housed in little neo-Classical “folly” or pleasure palace, presents the work of Paul Belmondo (1898-1982), a sculptor (primarily) who maintained a devotion to the traditions of 18th-century classicism and antiquity at a time when many of his contemporaries were exploring and creating other movements and inspirations.

Belmondo notoriously did not want a museum devoted to his work. The impulse for the museum was likely less his own fame or talent than that of his famous son, the actor Jean-Paul Belmondo, who with his brother and sister donated the works in their possession to the form the base of the collection.

Presented on four levels, two open and bright, two containing dark wooden niches, the initial figures seen here hold the promise of a collection devoted to serenity and grace, as in his beautiful Marianne/La République dites d’Alger (1933). But before long it becomes evident that the figures, mostly busts, however technically skilled their execution, have instead been emptied of character, like a once elegant women who has been given anti-depressants in order to hold her pose.

The emotional void of Belmondo’s work as presented here is all the more striking in that Belmondo’s most viewed work—and deservedly so, seen by millions of visitors to Paris—is his copy (1964) of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux’s joyous and orgiastic La Danse that decorates the façade of Paris’s Garnier Opera. Carpeaux’s original (1865-1869) is in the Orsay Museum.

In the absence of emotion or expression, the museum does reveal Belmondo’s excellent technique in sculpture and drawing as well as in his creation of designs for medals and medallions commissioned from Belmondo by the French national mint. Several sculptures by his contemporaries complete the collection.

The Paul Belmondo Museum makes for a charming sculptural walk-through, however the museum isn’t inspiring or significant enough to warrant coming to Boulogne-Billancourt for it alone. That isn’t to say that it should be avoided but rather that a traveler should consider coming out this way with a sense of discovery for the town as a whole, including this museum.

Boulogne-Billancourt has already earned a sweet if modest place as an afternoon’s excursion into the near suburbs thanks to the presence of:
– the Musée des Années Trente, a.k.a, M-A30, a museum dedicated to arts of the 1930s;
– the Albert Kahn Museum and Gardens. The gardens are comprised of French, English, and more uniquely Japanese gardens, along with zones presenting of three types of forest. The museum holds a vast collection of images from around the world commissioned from numerous photographers and film cameramen by Albert Kahn (1860-1940). Improvements to the garden and museum are currently underway’
– lesser attractions that can nevertheless lead a visitor to wander throughout the town, including the Paul Marmottan Library, devoted to the Napoleonic interests of its founder at the end of the 19th century, a brief stroll in the Cemetery of the West (Cimetière de l’Ouest), and assorted buildings from the 1930s. An mp3 audioguide to sights and buildings from the 1930s in Boulogne-Billancourtcan be downloaded free of charge from the town’s website.
– and the usual pastry and café pleasantries of Paris’s comfortable western suburbs.

Ile Seguin

Further reasons to venture this way will appear in the coming years now that one of the Paris region’s major projects is about to start taking shape: the redevelopment of Ile Seguin, a 28.4-acre island in the Seine that from 1920 to 1992 was occupied by a Renault factory.

The Ile Seguin project, unveiled in the summer of 2010, promises an island dedicated to commerce, culture, and green space. Its current model includes a 600-800-seat concert hall for classical music, a 3000-seat hall for amplified music (+ possible seating for 2000 more on the square out front), a music conservatory, an upscale hotel, movie theaters, shopping, art galleries, the Madona Bouglione Circus (1400 seats), and the Cartier Foundation, along with acres of covered garden, with the full project slated for completion by the end of 2017.

A magazine put out by Boulogne-Billancourt’s town hall puts a question mark beside the space of a possible Museum of the History of France. The idea of such a museum is highly politicized, with each political, ideological, and intellectual camp claiming that another will use it to promote its own vision of what defines France, so the question mark is quite substantial. Nevertheless, the mere possibility of such a museum being built beyond the limits of Paris is a sign that the capital is prepared to spread its goodwill.

Paris is expanding its horizons—and so should the visitor.

© 2010, Gary Lee Kraut

Musée Paul Belmondo, 14 rue de l’Abreuvoir, 92100 Boulogne-Billancourt. 01 55 18 69 01. Open Tues.-Fri. 2-6pm, Sat. and Sun. 11am-6pm. Entrance: 4.70 euros, free for under 16. Museum passes available for those also planning to visit 3 or 4 of the other museums in town.

The museum is a 15-minute walk from metro Boulogne-Jean-Jaurès. Or from that station take bus 123 to the Eglise Notre-Dame stop then walk 5 minutes from there. There’s also a free bus named SUBB within the town, with the Parc Rothschild stop being right near the museum.

Related article: For an article about recent developments on the eastern edge of Paris read Paris Rive Gauche: A 21st Century Left Bank.

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Marianne soothes the France with her confident, compassionate gaze, sustains them with pride, honors their dead and, like Uncle Sam, leads them the French to battle. As an allegory of The Republic she is represented in village, town, and city halls throughout France. Since the 1960s the bust of Marianne has been modeled successively after celebrities: Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Deneuve, Mireille Mathieu, Laetitia Casta.

The version most seen by visitors to France is the figure leading soldiers to battle in the sculptural scene entitled “La Marseillaise” on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

The photo above, however, is of Marianne as depicted by the sculptor Paul Belmondo (1898-1982), who was born to Italian parents in Algeria. Created in 1933, the bust is entitled “Marianne or The Republic so-called of Algiers.” It is found at the Paul Belmondo Museum in Boulogne-Billancourt.

– text and photo GLK.

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This lion is a small replica of a monumental sculpture by Bartholdi, the sculptor who created the Statue of Liberty: “Liberty Lighting the World.”

The Lion, made in Belfort, a town in the east of France, represents the heroic resistance of Colonel Denfert Rochereau during the siege of the town by Prussians in 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War.

Place Denfert Rochereau in the 14th arrondissement, though empty in this photo, is no foreigner to crowds since it’s the point of departure of many demonstrations and parades in Paris.

I like this square for its lion, its paving stones, its entrance to the Catacombs, the boulevards extending out from here, and its proximity to rue Daguerre, a street named for one of the inventers of photography.

It’s early morning. In a moment the streetlights are going to turn off.

Ce lion est une réplique miniature d’une sculpture monumentale de Bartholdi (le sculpteur entre autres de la Statue de la liberté : « La liberté éclairant le monde ») faite à Belfort pour représenter la résistance héroïque du colonel Denfert Rochereau au siège de la ville par les Prussiens en 1870. Cette place parisienne du 14e arrondissement connaît la foule car elle est le point de départ de bon nombre de manifestations ou défilés parisiens.

J’aime cette place pour son lion, ses pavés, son entrée des Catacombes, les boulevards qui en partent, la proximité de la rue Daguerre…

Ici, au petit matin. Dans un instant, l’éclairage public va s’éteindre.

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“April in Paris” has a particularly American ring to it. So for those Americans unable to get to Paris this month because of airport closings due to the erupting volcano in Iceland, Va-nu-pieds, the barefoot photographer went out on a photo shoot with Paris’s Ladies Liberty in a France Revisited exclusive.

Here’s Lady Liberty just beyond the Eiffel Tower on Ile aux Cygnes.

Here’s Lady Liberty in the Luxembourg Garden.

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