A hidden gem in the Royal Stables of Versailles

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13 Jun

Away from the public eye, only a few feet away from the Château of Versailles securely stored inside the Royal Stables, lies an unsuspected treasure: the Louvre Museum’s unbelievable gallery of plaster casts of the Department of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquites.

The mouldings of the Winged Victory of Samothrace with and without her wings, the nymphs of Girardon, the metopes of the Parthenon and even the colonnades of the Temple of Castor and Pollux can quietly be observed inside the stone vaulted high-ceilinged wings of the Small Stable built between 1679 and 1682 by Jules Hardouin-Mansart.

Formerly stored in the Louvre Museum, the casts landed in Versailles in 1970 after the events of May 1968 when protesters managed to destroy half the plaster collection considering it a symbol of academicism and artistic rigour. Between 1970 and 1978 more than a hundred casts were reassembled but then left untouched until 1999, when the Louvre’s Department of Greek, Etuscan and Roman Antiquities launched the initiative to restore the entire collection. The gypsothèque in Versailles finally opened in 2014 after multiple restorations and a minute research work regarding the mouldings origin.