VERSAILLES. - City and diocese in the department of Seine-et-Oise in France. It has an area of 5,659 sq km with a population of 1,500,000 inhabitants, of whom 1,000,000 are Catholics, distributed among 587 parishes, served by 846 diocesan priests and 130 regulars; it has a major and a minor seminary, 40 male religious communities and 95 female (Ann. Pont. 1953, p. 446).
The diocese was created by Pius VII on 9 March 1802. It comprised the two departments of Seine-et-Oise and Eure-et-Loir; but the latter department was detached from the diocese of V. in 1824 in order to re-establish the ancient diocese of Chartres. It is a suffragan of Paris. Among its bishops are remembered J.-Fr.-Et. Borderies (1827-32); P.-A.-S. Goux (1877-1904); Ch. Giber (1906-31).
The cathedral of St-Louis was built between 1743 and 1754 by J. Hardouin-Mansart in the Louis XV style; in it are preserved relics of King St. Louis, formerly venerated in the castle. In front of the Cathedral is the statue of the abbé De l'Epée, benefactor of the deaf-mutes. The church of Notre-Dame is the ancient parish of the castle; it too is the work of Mansart, its first stone was laid by Louis XIV on 10 March 1684.
It was the ancient residence of the Court of France from Louis XIV until the French Revolution and the seat of the French Government from 1871 to 1879. Until the 17th century it had been nothing but a simple village in which Louis XIII built in 1624 a small hunting lodge and in 1632 acquired the lordship of it. Louis XIV entrusted the rebuilding of the ancient castle to the architect Le Vau, and to Le Nôtre the commission for the gardens, and subsequently the enlargements to J. Hardouin-Mansart (1645-1708). To him are owed the great and small stables, the Great Gallery also called the Gallery of Mirrors; for the orangery and for the chapel he was assisted by the architects R. De Gotte and Le Nôtre; then the Grand Trianon, the castles of Clagny and of Marly. The architect Gabriel for Louis XV added other apartments, the hall for the opera and the small Trianon. Under Napoleon I it was restored by the architect Fontaine. King William of Prussia was proclaimed emperor of Germany in the Gallery of Mirrors on 18 Jan. 1871. On 28 June 1919 in the same gallery the Treaty of V. was signed; at V. the president of the French Republic is elected. - See pl. CXXXVI.
