VERSAILLES. – A city and diocese in the department of Seine-et-Oise, France. It has an area of 5,659 km² with a population of 1,500,000, of whom 1,000,000 are Catholics, distributed across 587 parishes served by 846 diocesan priests and 130 religious; it has a major and 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 originally included the two departments of Seine-et-Oise and Eure-et-Loir; however, the latter was detached from the diocese of Versailles in 1822 to restore the ancient diocese of Chartres. It is a suffragan of Paris. Among its bishops are remembered J.-F.-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; it houses relics of St Louis, formerly venerated in the château. Before the cathedral stands the statue of the Abbé de l’Épée, benefactor of the deaf and mute. The church of Notre-Dame is the ancient parish church of the château; it too is a work of Mansart, its first stone having been laid by Louis XIV on 10 March 1684.
It was the ancient residence of the French court from Louis XIV until the French Revolution and seat of the French government from 1871 to 1879. Until the 17th century it had been merely a village in which Louis XIII built a small hunting lodge in 1624 and acquired its lordship in 1632. Louis XIV entrusted the reconstruction of the old château to the architect Le Vau, and to Le Nôtre the gardens; later enlargements were entrusted to J. Hardouin-Mansart (1645–1708). To him are owed the great and small stables, the Grande Galerie also called the Hall of Mirrors; for the orangery and the chapel he was assisted by the architects R. De Cotte and Le Nôtre; then the Grand Trianon, the châteaux of Clagny and Marly. The architect Gabriel, for Louis XV, added further apartments, the opera house and the Petit Trianon. Under Napoleon I it was restored by the architect Fontaine. King William of Prussia was proclaimed German Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors on 18 January 1871. On 28 June 1919 the Treaty of Versailles was signed in the same gallery. The President of the French Republic is elected in Versailles. – See pl. CXXXVI.