Step through the heavy gilded gates and enter the candlelit labyrinth of seventeenth-century Versailles—the undisputed center of European wealth, fashion, and absolute power. Beneath soaring painted ceilings and the light of ten thousand melting wax candles, thousands of the continent’s wealthiest aristocrats lived trapped inside a golden cage of mandatory court etiquette, constant surveillance, and calculated devotion to the Sun King.
From industrial espionage in the Hall of Mirrors and ruinous card tables to the invisible labor of five thousand below-stairs servants and the king’s quiet midnight retreats, drift off to the slow, sensory history of what life was truly like for the ultra-rich at history's most opulent palace.