In our ongoing series, Millie Walton selects and explores the world’s best art hotels. In this edition, she checks into Airelles Le Grand Contrôle, Versailles.
Ever wondered what it would have been like to live the life of Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette? At Airelles Le Grand Contrôle you get pretty close to experiencing it. It’s the only hotel set within the grounds of the Chateau de Versailles, spread across a trio of buildings built in 1681, originally as a private residence for the Duke of Beauvilliers, a close friend and confidant of the King.
In 2021, luxury hotel group Airelles reopened the doors, following painstaking restorations that involved sourcing everything from antiques and art to wallpaper and silverware, all in keeping with the tastes of the period just before the French Revolution.
The Concept
As well as being a five-star hotel, Airelles Le Grand Contrôle is, quite literally, a living museum. Every detail has been meticulously considered to transport you, from the moment you step through the doors, into a different era. Think staff dressed as footmen, maids and butlers, silver plates of macarons and sugared bonbons in every room, low-hanging crystal chandeliers, gilded frames, decorative objects, patterned wallpapers and four poster beds swathed in draped fabrics.
Most furnishings are genuine antiques, sourced from auctions all across Europe, while others have been reproduced from archival designs held at the Palace of Versailles. Afternoon tea is included for all guests, and every room comes with a personal butler, who can, if you wish, treat you to a royal awakening, beginning with a gentle scratch at the bedroom door (heaven forbid a knock), the curtains being drawn and a cup of warm, sweet milk being pressed into your hands. They can even run a bath for you, should the mood strike. Everything is a feast for the eyes, indulgent to the extreme and just the right side of theatrical.
The Collection
Art was, of course, an essential part of any noble’s home in the 18th-century and the hotel’s vast collection is of museum standard, with almost all the pieces depicting scenes from or dating back to that era.
There’s some secrecy around where the art has been sourced from – ‘a private collector’, we’re told – but it has been exceptionally well chosen and placed. There’s a particular emphasis on landscape paintings and lush still-life compositions, with glistening fruit and blooming flowers, which feel perfectly in keeping with the extravagant mood.
We especially admired the hang of botanical drawings surrounding an untitled figurative painting dating from the 18th-century in the ‘snug’ room of the hotel’s new restaurant La Table des Jardiniers, as well as the delicately pressed flowers framed in our suite’s bathroom.
The Design Details
Architect Christophe Tollemer oversaw the hotel’s design working with Emmanuelle Vidal-Delagneau, a specialist in heritage and the art market, and a member of the Commission for National Treasure to create spaces that are opulent as well as true to history, though a few modern concessions have been made.
For instance, the chandeliers use bulbs rather than candles and, while there’s no television in the rooms, there is a discreet ‘tech’ box with an iPad for streaming and ordering room service. The spa has been modelled on traditional Roman baths, with red-bricked walls, columns, busts on the walls and flickering imitation candlelight.
But it’s not just the interiors that make the hotel so special – it’s the positioning: framed views of the Palace and its gardens (accessible for guests at any time via a door from the main terrace), and across the park dense with trees and the Lake of the Swiss Guards.
The Rooms
All of the rooms are individually styled and named after a well-known personality of the day. We stayed in one named after Madame de Fouquet, a celebrated socialite who lived with her husband at Le Grand Contrôle until 1787, and evidently enjoyed the finer things in life: a canopy bed, two marble bathrooms and a terrace.
The room had been specially set up for our arrival with plates of sweets and pastries, a bowl of fruit (on top of a complimentary mini bar), pyjamas and pillows embroidered with our initials, plus a little tent and games for our toddler, including a giant polar bear. Next level indulgence.
The Food & Drink
Alain Ducasse presides over the menus at Le Grand Contrôle, which means that every meal is fine dining, from breakfast (or brunch) through to lunch, afternoon tea and dinner. For the full 18th-century experience, there’s the Royal Feast, a five-course menu that reimagines royal favourites such as white asparagus and caviar and roasted lamb, tailored to the seasons and taking a particularly theatrical turn on Saturday evenings when the tables are arranged for banquet-style dining.
Or you can opt, as we did, for a more relaxed setting at La Table des Jardiniers, which feels more like dining in a very opulent, slightly eccentric friend’s house, where the dishes are rich, generous and unapologetically French. The French onion soup was one of the best we’d ever had, served in a huge silver tureen alongside spring vegetable pot-au-feu and a towering platter of crispy French fries.
Art in the Neighbourhood
Versailles itself is a relatively small and sleepy town, but when you’ve got a collection of around 90,000 works of art on your doorstep, there’s no real need to venture beyond the gates. The collections span the Middle Ages up to the late 19th-century, including sculptures, paintings and specially commissioned pieces (quite a few portraits of the various kings, as you’d expect).
Guests of the hotel are given privileged access to the Palace, with after-hours tours – ours included a sneak peek of the organist practising for a weekend service and a stroll down an empty Hall of Mirrors, featuring magnificent ceiling paintings by Charles Le Brun, at sunset.
Just a few highlights to look out for: Paolo Veronese’s vast The Feast in the House of Simon (1572), originally intended for a Venetian refectory before being acquired by Louis XIV and later installed at Versailles; Marie-Antoinette’s jewellery chest (late 18th century) by Martin Carlin; and Passemant’s Astronomical Clock (1749–53), an almost obsessive feat of engineering, featuring a sphere for tracking equinoxes, solstices and eclipses, an innovative four-hand dial, a disc indicating the phases of the moon and a pendulum that doubles as a natural thermometer.
Lead image: Airelles Le Grand Contrôle
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