Louis XIV had been only five years…

Louis XIV had been only five years old at the death of his father Louis XIII, who had built a hunting lodge at Versailles.

When Louis XIV commenced his personal reign in 1661, he had begun to take an interest in Versaiiles.

The idea of leaving Paris, where, as a child, he had experienced firsthand the insurrection of the Fronde, has never left him, and he had commissioned his architect Le Vau and his landscape architect Le Nôtre to transform the castle of his father, as well as the park, in order to accommodate the court.

The king had decided after the Treaty of Nijmegen in 1678  that the court and the government are to be established permanently in Versailles; this occurs on May 6, 1682.