🇫🇷France·Open to the public
Orangery of the Palace of Versailles
Versailles
- Year
- 1684–1686
- Architect
- Jules Hardouin-Mansart
- Style
- Classical baroque, walls 4 to 5 m thick
- Dimensions
- ≈150 m long, 13 m high
« The largest orangery in Europe in the late seventeenth century, built to shelter more than a thousand of Louis XIV's orange trees. »
Built by Hardouin-Mansart between 1684 and 1686 to replace a more modest orangery by Le Vau, it drew on the horticultural theory of the gardener Jean-Baptiste de La Quintinie. Its central gallery, over 150 metres long and 13 metres high, was heated in winter to protect the citrus trees, which were carried back out to the terrace each spring. More than 1,000 orange trees confiscated from Nicolas Fouquet were moved here as early as 1664. The building is now part of the visitor route through the Versailles estate and still shelters century-old citrus trees.
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48.80° N, 2.12° E