Cafe Rosa looked tempting, but we just missed out they were closing as we decided it was time to stop. Shame too, it looked delightful inside.
We had heard that Louis X1V had built a Chateau at Marly Le Roi, so we searched the little town until we came across a sign to Le Parc...
From Chateau Versailles Website:
The Château de Marly was built by Jules Hardouin-Mansart from 1679 on for the leisure activities of Louis XIV and his family. The field was composed of a castle framed by twelve pavilions. At Marly, the king tied his attention to the gardens. Indeed, the landscape offered a variety of perspectives and the Marly machine supplied the ponds abundant amount of water possible at Versailles. Considered a marvel, Marly and its gardens were progressively destroyed in the XVIIIª century. Today, only the outline of the park pavilions and foundations are still visible.
From Wikipedia: At the Château of Marly, Louis XIV of France escaped from the formal rigors he was constructing at Versailles. Small rooms meant less company, and simplified protocol; courtiers, who fought among themselves for invitations to Marly, were housed in a revolutionary design of twelve pavilions built in matching pairs flanking the central sheets of water, which were fed one from the other by prim formalized cascades.
By Pierre-Denis Martin (1663-1742) Public Domain, Wiki Media
The château is no more, nor the hydraulic "machine" that pumped water for Versailles. Only the foundation of Jules Hardouin-Mansart's small château, the pavillon du Roi remains at the top of the slope in Marly park.
