The Dark Reality of Sleeping at Versailles in 1715 | History for Sleep

Versailles in 1715 was the most glittering palace in Europe — and one of the worst places on earth to sleep. Behind the gold, mirrors, fountains and ceremony were freezing corridors, leaking windows, chamber pots left in hallways, rats inside the walls, fleas in silk furniture, servants sleeping on planks, courtiers crammed into attic rooms, and thousands of people fighting for a few hours of rest near the body of one old king.At Versailles, sleep was not private. Rank decided where you slept, how close you slept to the King, whether you had a room, a cot, a mattress, a hallway, or nothing at all. The King’s own bedtime was a public ritual, watched by nobles who competed for the honor of holding his candlestick, while the servants who carried the real candles, water, firewood, notes, medicine and chamber pots stayed awake through the night.This episode goes inside Versailles during the last year of Louis XIV: the sleepless servants, the crowded palace, the dirty corridors, the Grand Commun kitchens, the royal coucher, the hidden beds, the candlelit deathwatch, the sick old king at the center of France, and the brutal truth that the palace of the Sun King was powered by people who almost never got to rest.