Vue du château de Versailles du côté de l'Orangerie, prise au delà de la grande pièce d'eau des Suisses

This view shows the Chateau de Versailles from the South, at the opposite end of the roughly North-South axis from the view shown in lot 129. At the centre is the Grande Pièce d'Eau des Suisses, originally a brackish pool polluted by waste from the town of Versailles. By 1687 it was laid out by Pierre Leclerc as a tamed and manicured pond seven hundred metres in length. The pond took its name from the Swiss Guard, who had been the King's bodyguards since the reign of King Louis XI and whose barracks were nearby. Across the pond can be seen the massive buttressed walls of Hardouin-Mansart's Orangerie, a U-shaped structure terminating in grand staircases which also underpinned the Parterre du Midi and the South Wing. Sheltered within the arms of the Orangerie are Le Nôtre's six turf parterres around which in winter gardeners arranged three thousand orange, lemon and pomegranate trees in tubs for protection against the cold.