Windsor Castle

Windsor Castle is a royal residence at Windsor in the English county of Berkshire. It is the oldest royal residence in the world.

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About 1070, when William the Conqueror was also having the Tower of London constructed, he built a wooden stockade at Windsor.

The site of Windsor Castle appealed to William the Conqueror because it was easily defensible and near Windsor Forest, a good hunting ground. William obtained title to the land from Westminster Abbey.

The original motte-and-bailey castle was built with timber. It was designed to protect Norman dominance around the outskirts of London and to oversee a strategically important part of the River Thames.

Henry I of England married his wife, Adeliza of Louvain, at Windsor Castle in January 1121. He was the first monarch to use Windsor Castle as a royal residence. He rebuilt much of the castle using Bagshot Heath stone for most of the work, and stone from Bedfordshire for the internal buildings.

Since the time of Henry I, Windsor Castle has been used by a succession of monarchs and is the longest-occupied palace in Europe.

Edward III was responsible for turning the fortress like building on the north side of the upper ward at Windsor into royal residence apartments. It had become evident by Edward's time that the need for royal comfort took priority over defensive capability. (The castle has been besieged only twice in its history.) To oversee the construction Edward employed William of Wykeham as clerk of works.

Edward III spent £51,000 on renovating Windsor Castle; this was the largest amount spent by any English medieval monarch on a single building operation, and over one and a half times the English King's typical annual income of £30,000. His rebuilding of the palace to make an even grander set of buildings was arguably the most expensive secular building project of the entire Middle Ages in England.

In 1603, 30,000 Londoners died from the plague. Queen Elizabeth I responded to the national crisis by fleeing with her court to Windsor Castle where she had a gallows set up with the promise that she would hang anyone who tried to follow her.

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had a darkroom installed at Windsor Castle to indulge their passion for photography.

The Lower Ward in 1840, by Joseph Nash,

After Prince Albert's death in 1861, Queen Victoria was called "The Widow at Windsor" as she continually mourned his passing and spent most of her remaining 39 years locked away at Windsor Castle.

A great fire broke out in the Queen's Private Chapel at 11:15 am on November 20, 1992, and quickly spread to the neighboring Brunswick Tower, St George's Hall banqueting space, and the private apartments in the eastern wing of the building. The fire burned for almost 15 hours and caused extensive damage, destroying nine State Rooms and damaging 115 rooms in total. The cost of the restoration work was estimated to be £36.5 million.

The fire was caused by a spotlight that was being used by renovators in the Queen's Private Chapel. The spotlight overheated and ignited a curtain, which quickly spread the fire. The fire was not discovered until it had already spread to several rooms, and it took firefighters several hours to bring it under control.

The fire was a major blow to Queen Elizabeth II, who had been using Windsor Castle as her weekend home for many years. She described the fire as her "annus horribilis," or terrible year, which also saw the separation of Prince Charles and Princess Diana and the publication of Andrew Morton's controversial biography of Diana.

Despite the damage, Windsor Castle was fully repaired within five years. The restoration work was led by the conservation architects Donald Insall Associates, and it was one of the largest and most complex restoration projects ever undertaken in the United Kingdom.

Queen Elizabeth II gave permission on December 6, 1994 for a Canadian-operated company to start exploratory drilling to see if there is, as suspected, a pool of oil under Windsor Castle's grounds. However, the plans were stymied when the Government did not renew the licence needed for exploration to take place.

A popular tourist attraction, Windsor Castle is used as a venue for hosting state visits, and is the Queen's preferred weekend home.

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More than five hundred people live and work at Windsor Castle, making it the largest inhabited castle in the world.

Windsor Castle has 400 clocks, all kept working by just one man.

Source Compton's Encyclopedia

Window

A window is an opening in a wall, door, roof or vehicle that lets in light and air. It is usually filled with a sheet of glass.

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HISTORY

Located in southern Anatolia, in modern day Turkey, the Neolithic town of Catal Huyuk had rectangular rooms with windows in the seventh millennium BC.

Window glass was first used in the Roman Empire in the late first century AD. The technology was likely first produced in Roman Egypt, in Alexandria.

Fragment of a Roman glass window By Bullenwächter 

Benedict Biscop (c. 628 – 690), founder of the monastery at Wearmouth, is said to have introduced stone edifices and glass windows to England. He bought builders and glass-workers from continental Europe to help erect the building, thus introducing stone edifices and glass windows to his home country.

In Saxon buildings, during the Dark Ages, windows were mere holes in a wall, covered by shutters or some kind of curtain. The hole served a three-fold purpose. It let in light and air. The hole also served as an outlet for smoke from the large fire used for heating and cooking. Thirdly, like an eye, it enabled people inside the house to look out. Thus window, a combination of Anglo-Saxon words, means "wind's eye."

In England windows made up of panes of flattened animal horn were used as early as the 14th century.

In Gloucester cathedral there's a stained-glass window the size of a tennis court. At 38 feet (11.58 meters) by 72 feet (21.95 meters), it was the largest window in the world when it was built in the 1350s. 

By the fifteenth century, glazed windows had become a feature of the richer homes of northern Europe.

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England in the latter half of the sixteenth century, windows were not yet plate glass but lattice. They occupied a much larger area of the wall space than in former times and let floods of light in.

The west side of Burghley House in Lincolnshire was designed so that when Elizabeth I arrived the windows would reflect the setting sun, and it would look like there was a fire in each one.

The fashion for glass windows (expensive and therefore a status symbol) is seen in extreme form in Hardwick Hall, built in England in the 1590s. The Derbyshire stately home, created by Bess of Hardwick, has 1403 mullions, made up of 140,000 individual pieces of glass. The house's appearance gives rise to the jingle "Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall."

Hardwick Hall in Doe Lea - Derbyshire Wikipedia 

The double-hung sash window was introduced in England in the 1670s and soon spread to the Netherlands. Along with the vertical sliding sash window it became standard in the United States during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Modern windows are often made with double or triple thicknesses of glass separated by air space for insulation; these are called double- or triple-glazed windows.

WINDOW TAX

In 1696, William III of England introduced a window tax to pay for the losses of the great recoinage of 1695. It cost two shillings per house, plus extra payments for every window more than ten.

Window tax was retained - and increased six times in the 18th century in England, particularly by William Pitt the Younger. The tax was eventually applied to all windows in excess of six. To avoid it, many householders would brick up all windows except six

A house in , Southampton, with bricked-up spaces in place of windows By Whilesteps

The window tax was extended to Scotland in 1784 under William Pitt the Younger. As the bricked-up windows prevented rooms from receiving any sunlight it was described as a "tax on light and air" and led to the expression "daylight robbery".

Because of the window tax, many new houses were built with few windows or people would close up existing windows. When people began to suffer health problems from lack of fresh air, the tax was finally repealed on July 24, 1851.

FUN WINDOW FACTS

Witch windows, which exist mostly in Vermont, were created due to the belief that witches couldn't fly broomsticks through slanted windows.

The first all glass, windowless building was completed in Toledo, Ohio in 1936 as the home of the Owens-Illinois Glass Company Laboratory.

When the telecommunications entrepreneur Robert A. Brooks had his corporate headquarters built in St. Louis, the arrangement of windows spelled out "Brooks Fiber Properties" in Morse code.

The single blade window cleaning squeegee was invented by Ettore Sceccone in 1936 and is still the most common form of commercial window cleaning today.

Before glass was used in windows, people in Asia used paper to fill the hole in the wall. The paper would let light in.

Airplane windows were once square until three fatal crashes in the 1950's were caused by the windows. Corners are weak points (four on a window) and stress/pressure can cause these points to crack.

In 1993, lawyer Garry Hoy attempted to show that the windows in a building were nearly unbreakable by running into one at full speed. The window was knocked out of its frame and Hoy fell with it to his death. However, the window did not break.

There are 760 windows in Buckingham Palace. The windows are cleaned every six weeks.

The George Hotel in Hull claims to have the smallest window in England.

York Minster has the largest medieval stained glass window in Great Britain.

Sources Compton's Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Britannica

Whitehall Palace

The Palace of Whitehall, in the Westminster neighborhood of London, was the main residence of the English monarchs from 1530 until 1698, when most of its structures were destroyed by fire.

The Old Palace of Whitehall by Hendrick Danckerts, c. 1675

Westminster Palace had been the main English royal residence for hundreds of years but in 1512 it was gutted by fire.

York Place was created by Cardinal Wolsey as his central London residence. He expanded it so much that it was rivalled by only Lambeth Palace as the greatest house in London,

Whitehall became an official royal palace in 1530 when Henry VIII of England seized York Place (later renamed Whitehall Palace) after the Cardinal fell out of favour. He transformed it into a magnificent royal residence to replace Westminster as his main London residence.

King Henry VIII hired the Flemish artist Anton van den Wyngaerde to redesign York Place, and he carried on extending it during his lifetime.

A sketch of Whitehall Palace in 1544, by Anton van den Wyngaerde.

The name Whitehall was first recorded in 1532; it had its origins in the white stone used for the buildings.

Henry included in his Whitehall residence a recreation centre with tennis courts, a pit for cock fighting and a tiltyard for jousting. He also had a fine bowling alley laid out.

Henry VIII created The Privy Garden of the Palace of Whitehall, a large enclosed space in the mid-1540s. It continued to be used as a pleasure garden by the Tudor and Stuart monarchs of England for many years.

It is estimated that more than £30,000 (several million at present-day valued, or several billion when compared to share of GDP) was spent during the 1540s on the Whitehall residence.

By the time of Henry's death, Whitehall was the largest palace in Europe.

The Tempest, Shakespeare's romantic comedy, was first presented at Whitehall Palace in 1611.

On January 5, 1617, the Native American princess Pocahontas was brought before King James I at the old Banqueting House in the Palace of Whitehall at a performance of Ben Jonson's masque The Vision of Delight.

James I made significant changes to the Whitehall buildings, notably the construction in 1622 of a new Banqueting House built to a design by Inigo Jones. His new Banqueting House introduced the Palladian style to Britain.

Nearly 20 years after the Banqueting House was built, King Charles I instructed Jones to prepare designs for rebuilding the whole of Whitehall Palace. These designs by Jones still exist and are among his most interesting creations.

Inigo Jones's plan, dated 1638, for a new palace at Whitehall.

Charles II was fascinated by mechanical things such as mechanical clocks and he had a laboratory at Whitehall where he spent a lot of time on experiments.

Foe around a century Whitehall Palace was the largest and most complex palace in Europe, with more than 1,500 rooms, overtaking the Vatican, before itself being overtaken by the expanding Palace of Versailles.

William III of England and his wife Mary disliked Whitehall Palace, their home in London. The fumes of the sea coal, which burned in most of the fireplaces of London, were too much for a man used to the cool, brown cows and cheeses of the Netherlands. As a result the royal couple lived mostly in Hampton Court.

On the afternoon of January 4, 1698 a Dutch maidservant was drying linen sheets on a burning charcoal brazier in a bed chamber at Whitehall Palace. For some reason the maid left the room and in her absence, the sheets caught fire. The flames quickly spread throughout the palace complex, raging for 15 hours before firefighters could extinguish it.

View Of A Fire At Whitehall Palace Pastel On Paper by English School

Many of the palace's wooden structures were destroyed in the fire. The remaining structures were torn down. The Banqueting House, built by Inigo Jones in 1622, survived the fire. Various other parts of the old palace still exist, mostly incorporated into new buildings in the Whitehall government complex.

White House

The White House, the official residence of the US president, is situated on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC. The 132-room Neo-classical mansion was built between 1793 and 1801 from the designs of James Hoban (1762-1831)

In 1792 the Commissioners of the District held a contest for the best design for the "President's House," or "President's Palace." George Washington had asked for "the sumptuousness of a palace, the convenience of a house, and the agreeableness of a county seat."

The design competition received nine proposals, including one submitted anonymously by Thomas Jefferson.

The first prize was won by James Hoban, an Irish-born architect. Hoban's was selected for its practical and aesthetically pleasing design. His design is said to have been suggested by the palace of the Duke of Leinster in Dublin, Ireland.

Architect James Hoban was awarded $500 and a parcel of land in Washington, DC, for his 1792 winning design for the President's House, now known as the White House.

The initial construction took place over a period of eight years, at a reported cost of $232,371.83 (equal to $3,430,446 today).

The first residents of the mansion were John Adams, second president of the United States, and his wife Abigail. Only six rooms were finished when they arrived on November 1, 1800. Abigail wrote: "The house is on a grand and superb scale, requiring about 30 servants. . . . [T]he fires we are obliged [to have] to secure us from daily agues . . . if they let me have wood enough to keep the fires. . . . [T]he great unfurnished audience room [East Room] I make a drying room of to hang up the clothes in."

In 1814 during the War of 1812, the British forces set fire to various government buildings including the White House. President James Madison was forced to flee the burning President's House. Only the exterior walls remained, and they had to be torn down and mostly reconstructed because of weakening from the fire and subsequent exposure to the elements, except for portions of the south wall.

The White House as it looked following the fire of August 24, 1814 

The White House was originally a whiteish-grey, the color of the sandstone it was built out of.  After it was burnt down during the War of 1812, its outside walls were painted white to hide the smoke stains.

President James Monroe and his family were the first to occupy the reconstructed White House , moving there in December 1817. He had the south portico built in 1824.

Since Monroe nearly every president has made some change in the White House. The north portico was erected in 1829. The first water pipes were installed in 1833; gas lighting in 1848 and an elevator in 1881.

In 1841 U.S. President John Tyler vetoed a bill which called for the re-establishment of the Second Bank of the United States. Enraged Whig Party members rioted outside the White House in the most violent demonstration on White House grounds in United States history.

When Charles Dickens went to visit President John Tyler at the White House in 1842, he walked through the ground-floor rooms and found ordinary citizens lounging on sofas and chairs.

Earliest known photograph of the White House, taken c. 1846 

When it was announced in 1851, that a bathroom was to be installed in the White House, there was a public outcry against such unnecessary expenditure.

Benjamin Harrison was the first president of the United States to use electricity in the White House.

Theodore Roosevelt officially renamed the home of the president of the US as The White House on October 12, 1901.

In 1902 Congress spent $425,000 to renovate the White House and construct the executive office building.

During 1933 a swimming pool was built in the west terrace, paid for by voluntary contributions to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1935 the ground floor and kitchens were remodeled.

In 1948 architects found that the White House building was in danger of collapse. Some experts stated that building a new Executive Mansion would be far cheaper than repairing the White House; but national sentiment was for keeping its original form intact. Congress appropriated $5.4 million for repairs. The restoration was finished in 1952 at a cost of almost $5.8 million.

President Harry S. Truman gave the first televised tour of the White House in 1952. He explained its history, stopped in front of paintings and furniture to tell stories, and even played the Steinway piano in the East Room.

The White House 1952

Pope John Paul II became the first pontiff to visit the White House on October 6, 1979.

The White House is estimated to be valued at $295 million.

The White House is not free for the President: he receives a bill for food and expenses every month.

Source Compton's Encyclopaedia

Westminster Palace

The Palace of Westminster, located on the banks of the River Thames in London, serves as the meeting place of the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

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The Palace of Westminster site was originally located on Thorney Island a small island on the River Thames, upstream of medieval London. The island was formed by rivulets of the River Tyburn, which entered the Thames near the lowest point where it could be forded from the north bank at low tide.

The site was first used for a royal residence by King Cnut the Great during his reign from 1016 to 1035.

St Edward the Confessor was the penultimate Anglo-Saxon monarch of England, ruling from 1042 to 1066. He built a royal palace on Thorney Island at about the same time as he built Westminster Abbey. He made the original palace of Westminster his main residence and this continued to be the royal domicile until the 16th century.

Henry VIII of England was the last royal to live at Westminster Palace. The royal residential area  was gutted by fire in 1512 and in 1530 he acquired York Place (later renamed Whitehall Palace) to replace Westminster as his main London residence,

The palace of Westminster has served as the home of the Parliament of England since the 13th century, when the first Parliament in England was summoned by baronial leader Simon de Montfort.
It is also the seat of the Royal Courts of Justice, based in and around Westminster Hall.

Parliament before the 1834 fire with Old Palace Yard in the foreground

In 1605, Guy Fawkes attempted to blow Westminster Palace up. He was caught and later executed

On October 16, 1834 a huge fire largely destroyed the Palace of Westminster. The conflagration was caused by the burning of small wooden tally sticks that had been used as part of the accounting procedures of the Exchequer until 1826, which were being disposed of carelessly in the two furnaces under the House of Lords. The blaze caused a chimney fire, initially under the floor of the Lords' chamber, then up through the walls before spreading rapidly throughout the complex.

The fire lasted for most of the night and developed into the biggest conflagration to occur in London between the Great Fire of 1666 and the Blitz of the Second World War; the fire could even be seen by the King and Queen from Windsor.

Massive crowds were attracted to the spectacle. By the following morning a large part of the palace had been destroyed, although the actions of the London Fire Engine Establishment ensured that Westminster Hall and a few other parts of the old Houses of Parliament survived.

J. M. W. Turner watched the fire of 1834 and painted several canvases depicting it, including The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons below.

In 1836 a design competition for a new palace was won by Charles Barry who, in collaboration with Augustus Pugin, incorporated the surviving buildings into the new complex.

Parliament's "new palace," was completed in 1850. It covers eight acres and has 1,100 rooms ,100 staircases and three miles (4.8 kms) of passageways, which are spread over four floors.

Today the ground floor is occupied by offices, dining rooms and bars; the first floor (known as the principal floor) houses the main rooms of the Palace, including the debating chambers, the lobbies and the libraries. The top-two floors are used as committee rooms and offices.

On the spring or autumn weekend when clocks go forward or back, 2,000 clocks in the Palace of Westminster must be changed.

Westminster Abbey

Westminster Abbey is a gothic church in central London.

Westminster Abbey with a procession of Knights of the Bath, by Canaletto, 1749

King Edward the Confessor built Westminster Abbey. As he dared not leave his kingdom, Edward the Confessor's original intention to make a pilgrimage to St Peter's Tomb was substituted by the rebuilding at Westminster of an abbey dedicated to St Peter for the Benedictine monks.

Traditionally founded by Sebert, King of the East Saxons, early in the 7th century, Edward The Confessor rebuilt the abbey starting around 1042 as a burial place for English kings.

Edward completed Westminster Abbey on the site of a small monastic building on Thorney Island in the marshes near the River Thames in 1065. It was to be served by Benedictine monks and intended to be the royal church. Unfortunately Edward was too ill to attend the ceremony of dedication.

Westminster Abbey was built close to where a vision of St Peter is said to have been seen on the Thames by a salmon fisherman named Edric. The Fishermen's Company offers a salmon to Westminster Abbey each year in memory of this.

Edward the Confessor died in January 1066 at his new palace at Westminster which was built so he could be close to his beloved abbey. He passed away within ten days of the consecrating of Westminster Abbey on December 28, 1065, and the Benedictine monks buried him within its walls.

St Peter's Abbey at the time of Edward's funeral, depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry

Rebuilding was begun by Henry III of England in 1245, who selected the site for his burial. It was finished in 1528 shortly before the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

The abbey's two western towers were built between 1722 and 1745 by Nicholas Hawksmoor, constructed from Portland stone to an early example of a Gothic Revival design.

Coronations have been held at the abbey since those of King Harold II in January 1066 and William The Conqueror in December 1066.

For centuries, the Coronation Chair included the Stone of Scone, on which Scottish kings were crowned. It was brought to England by Edward I in 1296. 700 years later, in a symbolic response to growing dissatisfaction among Scots at the prevailing constitutional settlement, the British Government decided that the stone should be kept in Scotland when not in use at coronation.

King Edward's chair. By Kjetil Bjørnsrud 

Monks in Westminster Abbey would eat 6,000 calories a day normally and 4,500 a day when "fasting". They drank a gallon of beer and 10 oz of wine and ate 2.25 lbs of bread, 5 eggs, and 2 lbs of meat or fish a day. Many monks became obese and suffered related conditions.

Westminster Abbey's formal title is The Collegiate Church of St Peter, Westminster. The more popular title is still used today, even though no monks have lived there since the 16th century.

The present Gothic abbey has the medieval shrine of Edward the Confessor at its heart.

Westminster School, a public school near to the abbey, was once the Abbey School.

In 1399 Canterbury Tales author Geoffrey Chaucer took a lease on a house in the garden of Westminster Abbey.

Covent Garden was originally the market garden for the convent of Westminster Abbey. Referred to as "the garden of the Abbey and Convent", and later "the Covent Garden", it was seized by Henry VIII and granted to the Earls of Bedford in 1552.

At least 16 royal weddings have been held at Westminster Abbey, though the only reigning monarchs to be married there were Henry I and Richard II.

Poets Corner was began by the burial of Edmund Spenser in 1599.

The poet Ben Jonson is the only person buried in a standing position in the abbey.

One of the most famous tombs in Westminster Abbey is that of The Unknown Warrior. A tomb of an unknown British soldier who was killed on the battlefield during World War I. He was buried in Westminster Abbey on November 11, 1920. The tomb is in the far western end of the nave and is covered by a slab of black Belgian marble. It is the only tomb in the abbey on which it is forbidden to walk.

By Mike from England - Tomb of the Unknown Warrior

In 1923, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother became the first royal to lay her bridal bouquet on the Grave of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey. Every royal married in the Abbey since has placed their bouquet on the grave the day after their wedding.

Queen Elizabeth II honored Nelson Mandela with a thanksgiving service at Westminster Abbey in early 2014. This made Mandela the first non-British person to be honored at Westminster Abbey.

When the Episcopal Canon Mary Simpson of New York spoke from the pulpit of Westminster Abbey in 1978, she was the first ordained woman to preach there in the 913 years since the Abbey was first consecrated.

Source Daily Express

Wall

We began building stone walls about 10,000 years ago when farming began and ways were needed to divide farms and keep sheep in.

The phase "The writing's on the wall" is biblical—in the book of Daniel, a hand appears at a king's feast and writes a message on a wall.

The Great Wall of China is more than 2,300 years old and more than 13,170 miles long. It was built over several thousands of years with several sections being built as early as the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC) and the Warring States Period (475-221 BC). After the Qin Dynasty (221BC - 206BC), the construction of the Great Wall became a huge project. The building of  the wall of Northern Qi (550-557), starting from Xiakou to Hengzhou, used 1,800,000 laborers. A section of Sui's (581 - 618) wall in Inner Mongolia required more than 1,000,000 men to build.

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When the Romans built a 21ft-(6.5 metes) high wall around Londinium (London), the capital of Roman Britain, they used 86,000 tonnes of stone in the construction.

The Roman emperor Hadrian initiated the construction of Hadrian's Wall, which marked the northern limit of Britannia to keep out the Picts and the Scots. Hadrian's Wall was 72 miles (116 kms) long and up to 20ft (6 metres) high. It took six years to build, starting in AD122.

The Chester city walls form the most complete circuit of Roman and medieval defensive town walls in Britain.

New York City's Wall Street got its name in because in 1653, Dutch settlers built an earthen wall on the land where Wall Street would eventually be formed in order to repel potential English invaders.

In 1961 the Soviet zone of Berlin was sealed off by the Russians, and a wall was built along the zonal boundary. The Berlin Wall divided the city until it was opened in November 1989. The concrete segment of the Berlin Wall was 66 miles (106 kms) long and nearly 12 feet (3.5 metres) high.

This image was taken in 1986 by Thierry Noir at Bethaniendamm in Berlin-Kreuzberg.

The world's tallest climbing wall is the 121ft (37 metres) Excalibur in Groningen, the Netherlands.

The longest wall in history is not the Chinese one, but the wall in Benin. The Walls of Benin had a length of over 9,900 miles (16,000 km) (four times longer than the Wall of China), until their destruction by the British in 1897. Building it consumed a hundred times more material than the Great Pyramid of Cheops.

The Walls of Ston in Croatia are the longest preserved fortification system in the world after the Great Wall of China.

A nook is a small corner formed by two walls; an alcove or recess, forming a hidden or secluded spot. A cranny, by comparison, is small, narrow opening, fissure, or crevice in a wall, or other substance.

Source Daily Express

Versailles (Palace)

The Palace of Versailles was the principal residence of the French royal family from 1682, under Louis XIV, until the start of the French Revolution in 1789, under Louis XVI. It is located about 12 miles (20 kms) southwest of the center of Paris.

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Versailles was once a small country village. Its name (Latin "versare") meaning turn over and over was a medieval expression for land that had been repeatedly ploughed.

The village of Versailles was surrounded by forests filled with abundant game, which became popular for hunting expeditions.

The future Louis XIII had a hunting trip in the Versailles forests in 1607. After he became king in 1610, Louis XIII returned to the village, bought some land, and in 1623-24 built a modest two-story hunting lodge there, which he later enlarged into a château.

His son Louis XIV first visited the Versailles château on a hunting trip in 1651 at the age of twelve, but returned only occasionally.

The garden facade of the chateau of Louis XIII in 1660-64. (Engraving by Israël Silvestre)

The French superintendent of finances, Nicolas Fouquet, presided over a large celebration in honor of Louis XIV. The festivities took place at Fouquet's magnificent newly completed chateau, Vaux-le-Vicomte. When Louis saw this palace he was outraged that one of his ministers should have such a home, while he did not. He had Fouquet thrown into prison and hired the men who had designed and built the palace to do the same for him.

Louis XIV conceived the plan for a magnificent new palace at Versailles just outside of Paris, which would replace the château there. He inaugurated the building project on May 7, 1664.

The men in charge of the project were Louis Le Vau (architect), Charles Le Brun (painter and decorator) and Andre Le Notre (landscape architect).

About 37,000 acres (15,000 hectares) of land were cleared to make room for tree-lined terraces and walks and thousands of flowering plants. In the center the cross-shaped Grand Canal was laid out. It was 1,737 yards (1,588 meters) long and 67 yards (61 meters) wide. There were 1,400 fountains and 400 pieces of new sculpture.

The beginnings of the palace in 1669 were fairly humble compared to the finished structure. The architect Le Vau enclosed the hunting lodge and gave it the appearance of a small palace.

The facade of the palace facing the garden in 1675

In 1676 another architect, Jules Hardouin-Mansart, was put in charge of redesigning and enlarging the building.

Over 30,000 labourers and 6000 horses were employed at one time during the construction of Versailles. It cost Louis XIV upwards of $2 billion (£1.5 billion) to construct. Most of the expense was in materials, as labor costs were very low in 17th century France.

All the materials used in building and decorating Versailles were made in France.

At the time Venice had a monopoly on making mirrors so Venetian artisans were lured to France. The Venetians then ordered the assassination of the mirror makers for giving their secrets away.

Versailles Hall of Mirror. By Photo: Myrabella 

On May 6, 1682 Louis XIV abandoned his old home, the Louvre. He moved his court to Versailles to establish his independence from the Paris nobility but the work continued for most of his reign.

Versailles' gardens had 400 sculptures, 1,500 fountains and covered more than 30,000 acres.

In order to supply water to the parks of the Palace of Versailles, Louis XIV ordered the construction of the machine Marly to pump water from the Seine located 6 miles (10 kms) away with a drop of 150 meters (492 ft). This machine, considered one of the most complex of its time worked for 133 years.

The palace of Versailles and its grounds had a population of 2000 courtiers, servants etc. Another 5000 lived nearby.

Louis opened Versailles to the public and the populace could come and watch the King dine.

One example of the luxury of Versailles was that even the chamber pots were made of silver.  In 1689 these chamber pots were melted down to help finance Louis XIV's war against Britain and other European nations.

The king's rising in the morning and going to bed at night at Versailles were attended by elaborate ceremonies called the "levee & couchee." Each noblemen had his own duty and part to play in these rituals.

The King's bedchamber. By Jean-Marie Hullot 

In 1743, King Louis XV of France had an elevator installed at Versailles to carry him from his first-floor room to his mistress on the second floor.

Three treaties of the 1783 Peace of Paris treaty, by which Britain recognised the independence of the United States, were signed at Versailles.

From 1682, when King Louis XIV moved from Paris and lived in the Versailles palace, until the royal family was forced to return to the capital in 1789, the Court of Versailles was the centre of power in the Ancien Régime.

The Treaty of Versailles, which formally ended the First World War, was signed in the Hall of Mirrors on June 28, 1919.

The Signing of Peace in the Hall of Mirrors, by William Orpen

The Palace of Versailles was designated a World Heritage site in 1979.

In 2017 the Palace of Versailles received 7,700,000 visitors, making it the second-most visited monument in the Paris region, just behind the Louvre.

Sources Daily Express, Compton's Encyclopedia

University

A university is a community or corporation of men or women devoted to higher learning. The word university is derived from the Latin universitas magistrorum et scholarium, which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars. "

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HISTORY

The University of al-Qarawiyyin is the oldest existing, continually operating higher educational institution in the world. It was founded in 859 in Fes, Morocco.

El Azhar, a Muslim university and mosque was founded at Cairo, Egypt in 969. From its inception it has been a significant influence in Muslim higher education.

Bologna University in the Kingdom of Italy, then part of the Holy Roman Empire, is the oldest university in continuous operation in the western world. In the 19th century, a committee of historians traced the founding of the University back to 1088.

Oxford is the western world's second-oldest university after the University of Bologna, There is no known date of foundation, but there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096.

The University of Paris existed for 820 years from 1150 AD to 1970, when it was broken up for being the main source of student revolutionaries who nearly overthrew the French government in May 1968.

Meeting of doctors at the University of Paris. From a medieval manuscript.

Oxford University grew rapidly from 1167 when King Henry II banned English students from attending the University of Paris. English students were not allowed to continue studying in Paris after Thomas Becket was murdered. King Henry III granted Oxford University a royal charter on June 20, 1248.

The precise beginnings of Cambridge University are unclear, but it is known that in 1209 a party of students arrived from Oxford, where there had been disturbances.
John de Baliol, a rich Norman, founded in 1253 Oxford's Balliol College, originally as a hostel for poor students. It was a penance for assaulting the Bishop of Durham.

Medieval scholars used to read leaning against high desks.

In the early 1300s Oxbridge students made their own arrangements with individual masters and lived in whatever lodgings they could find. The first residential colleges were established later in the century: Merton set the pattern in Oxford in 1264, followed by Peterhouse in Cambridge twenty years later.

Front quad of Merton. By I, Sailko, Wikipedia

Charles, King of Bohemia, issued a Golden Bull to establish Charles University in Prague in 1348, the first university in Central Europe.

University fees in the United Kingdom in the late 14th century were £3 a year- £1,370 ($1,564) in today's prices.

The first universities in the Western Hemisphere were established by the Spaniards: the Universidad Santo Tomás de Aquino, in what is now the Dominican Republic was the first university in the Americas to be founded in 1538.

The National University of San Marcos, the oldest university in South America, was founded in Lima, Peru, in 1551.

The Pontifical and Royal University of Santo Tomas, The Catholic University of the Philippines, was established in 1611. It has the oldest extant university charter in Asia and is one of the world's largest Catholic universities in terms of enrollment found on one campus.

The University of Santo Tomás campus (circa 1940's). By GabDelRosario 

A vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony established the first college in what would become the United States in 1636. Today it is known as Harvard University.

The Collegiate School of Connecticut was chartered in Old Saybrook, Connecticut in 1701. When British merchant and slave trader Elihu Yale gave books and goods worth $2,500 to the Collegiate School seven years later, its name was changed to Yale University.

The University of Georgia, the first public university in the United States, was founded in 1785. It was incorporated by the Georgia General Assembly, which had given its trustees, the Senatus Academicus of the University of Georgia, 40,000 acres (160 km²) for the purposes of founding a "college or seminary of learning."

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, one of the oldest public universities in the United States and the only one to award degrees in the 18th century, received its charter in 1789. The cornerstone of Old East, the oldest state university building in the United States, was laid on the campus of the University of North Carolina four years later.

While the Middle Ages saw universities sprung up all over Europe, until the 19th century England only had two: Oxford and Cambridge. Durham, which was founded in 1832 is England's third oldest officially recognized university.

Shaw University was founded on December 1, 1865, by the American Baptist Home Mission Society in Raleigh, North Carolina. It is the oldest historically black university in the South and one of the oldest in the nation. The university was founded to provide education to newly emancipated African Americans in the aftermath of the Civil War. Shaw University has a long and distinguished history of providing educational opportunities to African American students.

Texas A&M University opened as the U.S. state's first public institution of higher education on October 4, 1876 with six faculty members and forty students. As of 2021 enrollment, Texas A&M's student body is the largest in the United States (72,982 in the fall 2021).

The University Tests Act passed in 1871 in the United Kingdom, allowed students to enter the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Durham without religious tests (except for those intending to study theology).

Brigham Young University, the largest religious university in the United States, was founded in Provo, Utah on October 16, 1875. Approximately 99 percent of the students are members of the Mormon Church.

The Brigham Young Academy building circa 1900

When California Governor Leland Stanford Sr. lost his only child to Typhoid, he decided to honour his late son by spending his fortune to build Stanford University, telling his wife that "the children of California shall be our children". The university was founded in 1885.

20th century innovations include universities serving international areas, for example, the Middle East Technical University at Ankara, Turkey, supported by the United Nations.

The Open University put out its first television broadcast about mathematics on UK's BBC Two in 1971. Two years later, on January 11, 1973, the first Open University degrees were awarded to students who had spent two years studying at home. Within just two years, it had become the UK's largest university, with more than 40,000 students.

Dartmouth became the last Ivy League college to go coeducational in 1972, when it allowed women to join men in pursuit of the A.B. degree.

RECORDS 

In 1994, Michael Kearney received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of South Alabama. Michael was 10 years old and the youngest-ever college graduate. As well as setting several world records related to graduating at a young age, as a game-show contestant, Kearnery has won over one million dollars.

When 13-year-old Ruth Lawrence achieved a starred first in Mathematics at Oxford University on July 4, 1985, she became the youngest British person ever to get a first-class degree. She took just two years to complete the three-year course.

The University of Pennsylvania has produced 25 billionaires, the most of any college in the world.