From the magazine

Versailles’s role as a palace of science

The vast seat of Bourbon power also doubled as a laboratory for experiments in astronomy, hydraulics, engineering, ballooning, medicine, mathematics and cartography

Philip Mansel
The ballooning experiment at Versailles in 1783. [Bridgeman Images]
EXPLORE THE ISSUE 11 January 2025
issue 11 January 2025

  • Versailles: Science and Splendour

    edited by Anna Ferrari

    Scala Arts & Heritage Publishing, pp. 128, £30

Versailles was a palace of science, as Anna Ferrari shows in this stimulating and innovative study, accompanying a dazzling exhibition of the same title at the Science Museum, London (until 21 April). Soldiers were subjected to electricity experiments in the Galerie des Glaces. The king watched the dissection of an elephant or a horse in the Menagerie.

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