The King’s Potager,

The King’s Potager, watched over by a statue of gardening genius Jean-Baptiste La Quintinie Statue of Jean-Sylvain Bailly in Salle du jeu de Paume, the royal tennis court, leading French Revolutionary and first mayor of Paris Cathédrale Saint-Louis from the King’s Vegetable Garden The King's Potager, a vegetable garden the size of a small village, provided for the court. This was no ordinary garden - ingenious experimentation by French gardening genius Jean-Baptiste La Quintinie meant that coffee and banana plants could be grown, lettuces were ready to eat in January, and strawberries were ripe in March. It’s still a working garden, run by a horticultural school whose students offer tours at the weekends (en.versailles-tourisme.com). The extraordinary, free-to-visit Salle du jeu de Paume, a court where the king would play a game considered the ancestor of tennis, gave me goosebumps just being there. Built in 1686, it is considered the founding site of French democracy, as it was here that in 1789 the spark that lit the French Revolution flickered into life when the Third Estate, a group of commoners appointed to represent the people, (alongside representatives of the nobles and the clergy), swore an oath to change the constitution of the Kingdom and created the National Assembly. The walls of this long room are lined with the names of those who signed the oath, including Guillotin and Robespierre. Just a few steps away is the Cathédrale Saint-Louis, a baroque beauty designed by the grandson of Jules Hardouin-Mansart. I visited in the evening, and the sunlight filtered 20 | The Good Life France The Good Life France | 21