Grands travaux au château de Versailles
French Listening Comprehension
Study Guide
Take a look at the following for help with any vocabulary and grammar that you might not
have understood in Versailles, then take
the test.
| Vocabulary | |
| un chantier | building site, project |
| endommager | to damage |
| faillir + infinitive | to almost do something |
| une grille | gate |
| un incendie | fire |
| un investissement | investment |
| un jour férié | public/legal holiday |
| lancer | to launch, begin |
| malgré | despite, in spite of |
| menacé | threatened |
| or | and yet, but |
| le patrimoine | heritage |
| prévu | planned, foreseen (from prévoir) |
| selon | according to |
| subir | to undergo, be subjected to |
| Grammar - Click the links for detailed lessons | |
| autant vs tant | |
| passé simple | Les premiers travaux ... furent ordonnés |
| subjunctive | sans que personne ne soit informé |
| Notes | |
| Mitterrand |
François Mitterrand, the Socialist president who died in 1996 and who set out to leave his mark with a series of grands projets of which the glass pyramid in the Louvre is the best-known. Together with the Great Arch at La Défense, the Bastille Opera House, and the new National Library, it could have borne the inscription found on Sir Christopher Wren's tomb in St. Paul's Cathedral: Si monumentum requiris circumspice (If you seek a monument, look around). Mitterrand's successor and erstwhile rival Jacques Chirac has ambitions on a slightly less pharaonic scale, but he too clearly feels the urge to bequeath a presidential legacy. One monument to the Chirac era will be his Museum of Primitive Arts, which is currently under construction near the Eiffel Tower; the other is a totally refurbished Versailles. No one should doubt that the palace and gardens, which were built for the Sun King between 1660 and 1710, are in dire need of renovation. Apart from the fire and security hazards mentioned in the feature, the growing complaints from visitors clamor for attention: long lines, too few restrooms, poor restaurant facilities, and inadequate information. In 1997 it was revealed to great official embarrassment that the Museum of the History of France, which forms part of the complex, was closed for lack of security guards. One of the palace's chief curators, Frédéric Didier, was blunt in a recent interview:"Le marché touristique est devenu concurrentiel, nous devons donc être performants. Or, malgré notre potentiel, il faut bien avouer que le public ressort hagard et épuisé, tel un troupeau de moutons lâché dans le plus célèbre des patrimoines de l'humanité." The scale of the project is vast, but the truth is that the vast majority of work will be basic maintenance. With 700 rooms to do up, plus 2,153 windows, 352 chimneys, and 28 acres of roof—not to mention 6,300 paintings, 2,000 sculptures and statues, 15,000 engravings, and 5,000 decorative art objects and furnishings—upkeep is enough of a task. |
| Saint-Simon | Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon (1675–1755) was a memoirist whose accounts of the latter part of Louis XIV's long reign have given historians some of the most revealing insights into life at Versailles. He wrote his memoirs over a 30-year period following the Sun King's death in 1715, but the manuscript was confiscated by Louis XV. A comprehensive edition was not completed until 1928. |
| Tempête | Two storms swept across France on the 26th and 27th of December 1999, causing 88 deaths and felling some 300 million trees, some four percent of the country's entire forests. Like other woods in the Ile-de-France region, the Versailles park was badly hit by the 100-mph winds and lost some 10,000 trees, including a famous cedar planted by Napoleon and a Virginia tulip tree brought back from the United States by General Lafayette. The American Society of Friends of Versailles has since played a key role in funding reforestation efforts. Sculptures from some of the uprooted trees recently went on display in an exhibition at the Trianon, Louis XIV's private palace on the grounds of Versailles. Several historic buildings across France, including the palace at Versailles, were also badly damaged in the storm. |
| la grille | The 10-foot-high gilded balustrade and gates are reproductions of the originals that once enclosed the palace's inner Royal Court. Their installation, along with the removal of an equestrian statue of Louis XIV erected by King Louis-Philippe in 1837, will be one of the few visible changes resulting from the restoration. Not all experts are happy with the decision to put back the "grille," however, arguing that it is not appropriate to try to recreate the palace exactly as it may have been at the time of the Sun King. Quite apart from the fact that it is an impossible goal (there are too many other new additions), the whole approach ignores Versailles's subsequent history. "Whether we like it or not, Versailles was also a palace of Louis-Philippe," writes Didier Rykner who runs the authoritative Tribune de l'art website. "La recréation des grilles ne sera rien d'autre qu'une mise en scène, fort coûteuse de surcroît. Lorsque l'on pense à tous les bâtiments en péril que l'on ne peut sauver faute d'argent, on reste étonné par de telles entreprises." |
| Lunéville | The castle of Lunéville, not far from Nancy in northeast France, was built between 1703 and 1709 and modelled on Versailles. Its heyday was in the middle part of the 18th century when it became the court of the dethroned king of Poland, Stanislas Leszczynski, duke of Lorraine. He died there in a bedroom fire in 1766. The damage caused by the January 2003 conflagration was terrible. The chapel, ducal apartments, and grand staircase were destroyed, along with the 30,000 documents in the military library, much of the palace's collection of Lunéville porcelain, and several masterpieces. Investigators blamed a short-circuit. A much less serious accident occurred at the Renaissance chateau of Chambord in the Loire Valley in August 2003. The collapse of a section of floor injured six people. The official report mentioned in the feature lists some 2,767 churches, cathedrals, and chateaux that are in peril. Some of them, including Amiens cathedral, are even said to pose a risk to the public. |
| Grands travaux au château de Versailles French Listening Comprehension Exercise |
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| Listen | Study | Test | ||
| Transcript Translation | ||||
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Sound files, transcript, and notes about People and Characters were originally published in Champs-Élysées audiomagazine (read my review) and are used with the permission of Champs-Élysées, Inc. |
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