When you think of the palace of Versailles, you probably think of opulence, of nobles and kings
dressed in wigs and stockings eating ten course meals, of lush gardens and spectacular marble
architecture. When King Louis XIV of France made it the official royal palace in 1682,
it had become a mighty symbol of the French Monarchy. But really, the palace was gross.
A lack of sanitation, too many people, and a general lack of hygiene at the time made
it a cesspool. It may have looked nice, but the smell was very much putrid. Welcome back
to Nutty History. Today, we’re exploring the dirty secrets of Versailles. Plug up
your noses and hang up some air fresheners for this one. During the medieval period
and well into the 19th century, Europeans were widely opposed to bathing. Hot water was said to
open the pores and expose people to all kinds of diseases. This dogma against bathing was actually
promoted fiercely by the Christian Church. In fact, Christianity is one of the few religions
that had no teachings surrounding hygiene. For early Christians – especially monks and
priests – cleanliness went hand-in-hand with luxury and excess, so the dirtier you were,
the holier you were. When the Black Plague hit in the mid 1300s and took out an estimated 30 to
50 percent of the population of Europe, “medical professionals” fell in line with the Church and
blamed hot water, saying it made people more susceptible to the deadly outbreak. That idea
stuck around for another 500 years. Louis XIV was very much influenced by these Christian ideas and
warnings of disease. It’s said he took just two baths during his entire life. Ironically though,
the Sun King, as he was nicknamed, also had a staggering amount of water fountains built
around the premises of Versailles. During his 72-year reign – the longest in history by the
way – Louis XIV had ordered the construction of hundreds of fountains, with over 1600 water jets
in total spewing out more than 6,000 cubic meters of water per hour. All that water had to come from
somewhere, and although Versailles was built on a marsh, it had very little usable water. So,
Louis XIV brought in the best scientists and engineers of the time and embarked on
a hydraulics project the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the Roman Empire. Water was pumped
from the Seine River. Hydraulic machines were invented. Aqueducts, reservoirs, and artificial
lakes were created. As a result, Europe ended up benefiting from all these innovations in
hydraulics and plumbing. Unfortunately, Louis XIV was not into indoor plumbing. While Versailles'
beautiful fountains flowed and flowed, the palace itself smelled worse than a gym locker room.
The palace of Versailles had notoriously bad plumbing. Add to that the fact that there
could be between 3,000 and 10,000 people at the palace on any given day, and you have a recipe for
some pretty stinky living arrangements. Louis XIV liked to keep a large court around him. There were
strict rules and etiquette as nobility tried to get on the king’s good side and move up the social
hierarchy. Those rules and etiquette apparently didn’t apply to bathroom habits or infrastructure,
though. There were far fewer toilets than could handle all the people living at or
visiting the palace. The palace had some public latrines, but not nearly enough. As a result,
stories abound of the latrines flooding and excrement leaking through the walls.
Private toilets, used by the higher-ranking nobility, were usually just pots or wooden
boxes with holes in them. Oftentimes, the contents of these chamber pots were simply
dumped out of windows, and passersby underneath would have to be wary of getting hit with an
unwanted aerial stink bomb. What’s more, Louis XIV often held court while sitting on a, well,
throne toilet. He famously had a custom-made throne with a hole in the bottom so he could
relieve himself while holding court. Picture a nobleman inquiring about land rights or some
such official business while the Sun King let out a…well, on the other hand, maybe don’t picture it.
Versailles or French – and European society in general – was also a hotbed for syphilis. This
horrible disease was looked down upon by the nobility at the palace as a sign of debauchery
and a godless lifestyle – despite the fact that extramarital affairs were quite common.
Symptoms of the disease included ulcers, blindness, paralysis, and even led to people’s
noses caving into their faces – an effect which spawned a pretty lucrative fake nose industry
at the time. To treat the disease, many of the same “medical professionals” who expounded the
benefits of not bathing would prescribe mercury as a cure. Mercury certainly wasn’t a cure,
and it often led to mercury poisoning. The phrase “a night with Venus, a lifetime with Mercury”
became a popular saying for those who had been afflicted with the disease. Syphilis could also
result in hair loss. Partially because of the disease, and partially because of unwanted lice,
nobility began wearing wigs. Men would commonly shave their heads and wear the powdery headdresses
because it was much easier to get rid of lice from a wig than from actual hair – they could
simply take off the wig and boil it in water to kill the itchy insects. Water still had its uses,
just not for bathing or indoor plumbing. With all that syphilis going around, you would think Louis
XIV would want to be pretty careful with the more intimate relationships. He wasn’t really,
though. He had several relationships before his first, reluctant marriage to Maria Theresa,
the daughter of Spain’s King Philip IV which ended the Franco-Spanish War in 1660. Louis
would soon take on his first mistress, Louise de La Valliere, who would stay at the court for more
than ten years from 1661 to 1674 and have four of his children. Midway through that affair,
Louis XIV took another mistress, the Marquise de Montespan, to whom he gave a lavish room directly
connected to his own as well as her own palace near Versailles. There, she had six children
with Louis. Then came Mademoiselle de Fontanges, a 20-year-old whom the king had a brief fling with.
Then it was another woman who was the governess to the children of Marquise de Montespan,
Madam de Maintenon, who eventually secretly married the King after his wife Maria Theresa
died. And if you’re shocked and confused by all the names so far, then just imagine the fact
that all this was going on in a lice-infested, sewage-filled, disease-ridden palace with a king
who liked to sit on a toilet while he held court in front of nobility trying their best to practice
proper etiquette, and you’ll definitely feel…more shocked and confused? So, we’ve
established that Louis XIV didn’t like baths…with water in them. What he did enjoy,
though, were baths filled with perfume. The Sun King’s famous marble bathing house was a large,
ornate, luxurious, octagonal bath that Louis would have filled with perfume instead of water. He was
particularly fond of a fragrance called odeur de Nerolie, a flowery essence from the blossom
of a particular type of orange tree. Louis liked the fragrance so much that he had over
2,000 of these orange trees growing on the grounds of Versailles. He even built a garden cathedral
for them so they would survive the French winters. The rare marble bath itself had a strange history
after Louis XIV died in 1715. Eventually his perfumy bath house was renovated, and the bath
covered over with parquet flooring. The room became occupied by one of Louis’ mistresses,
the Marquis de Montespan, and it sat literally right under her bed for a while. In 1750,
the bath was torn out of the ground and moved to a garden in the palace of Fontainebleau,
some 40 miles from Versailles. It then somehow made its way to the home of a
French poet who lived in the West of Paris in a mansion called the Pink Palace. Finally,
in 1934, the perfume bath was brought back to Versailles and installed in the “Great Orangery”,
that cathedral Louis built to provide the flowers for his precious perfume.
Louis XIV and the nobility at Versailles were also very into animals…of all kinds. Dogs, cats,
rabbits, sheep, monkeys, cranes…you name it, Louis probably had it. The animals were held
up on pedestals and praised through hundreds of paintings and sculptures. Louis’ dogs were often
immortalized by having their names written in golden letters on the walls. There may well have
been more animals at Versailles than people. And with all those animals comes the stuff they leave
behind after they digest their food. If there already wasn’t enough plumbing infrastructure
for humans, the thousands and thousands of animals only made the situation worse. Reports of people
stepping in dog and cat “surprises” that lay about all over the place were common. Versailles
was certainly an architectural marvel of its time. You definitely would’ve been impressed, so long as
you didn’t have to use your nose. But who knows, maybe it had already fallen off due to the disease
that lay about. Let us know in the comments any other weird secrets you know about Versailles.
As always, thanks for watching! Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more Nutty History.