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Marly-Le-Roi

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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A village of northern France in the department of Seine-et-Oise, 5 m. N. by W. of Versailles by road. Pop. (1906), 1409. Notwithstanding some fine country houses, Marly is dull and unattractive, and owes all its celebrity to the sumptuous chateau built towards the end of the 17th century by Louis XIV., and now destroyed. It was originally designed as a simple hermitage to which the king could occasionally retire with a few of his more intimate friends from the pomp of Versailles, but gradually it grew until it became one of the most ruinous extravagances of the Grand Monarque. The central pavilion (inhabited by the king himself) and its twelve subsidiary pavilions were intended to suggest the sun surrounded by the signs of the zodiac. Seldom visited by Louis XV., and wholly abandoned by Louis XVI., it was demolished after the Revolution, its art treasures having previously been dispersed, and the remains now consist of a large basin, the Abreuvoir, a few mouldering ivy-grown walls, some traces of parterres with magnificent trees, the park, and the forest of 82 sq. m., one of the most pleasant promenades of the neighbourhood of Paris, containing the shooting preserves of the President of the Republic.

Close to the Seine, half-way between Marly-le-Roi and St Germain, is the village of Port-Marly, and one mile farther up is the hamlet of Marly-la-Machine. Here, in 1684, an immense hydraulic engine, driven by the current of the river, was erected; it raised the water to a high tower, where the aqueduct of Marly began (700 yds. in length, 75 in height, with 36 arches, still well-preserved), carrying the waters of the Seine to Versailles.