Reflections on Versailles

Versailles made me think.  It had everything I teach in my survey classes, but, I was surprised by my feelings that it's a bit of a shell.  

Of course I was overwhelmed by the experience but what I also noticed that it felt kind of like a looted site. 

Like the Coliseum and even the School of Athens, there's vandalism.  If you look closely at the windows in the Hall of Mirrors, people over the centuries have etched their names into the glass.

At Assisi, the Vatican, the Doumo of Florence they all had tourists' impotent scratching of their names and dates into the softer vulnerable almost inconspicuous parts of the monuments.

 A little bit like the Coliseum.   The bones are all there, and some of the furniture and freestanding stuff is there, but mostly it felt like walking through an old mansion or house that the occupants had moved out of.  

The walls are still painted and a lot of the fixtures and ornaments are still intact, especially the super big unmovable bulky paintings of Napoleon, everything else has been stolen moved out.  The house is in repair and some things have been replaced with lower quality stuff.

For example, the floors and chandeliers in the Hall of Mirrors and the bronze sculptures in the gardens are all newer replacements, although to be fair, the garden sculptures are 19th century.