Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous: Versailles Webquest

As this painting shows, Louis XIV liked to live in style. 

We know that absolute monarchs of 17th century Europe were somewhat power-hungry. They dominated politics, economics, religion, and culture in their countries. But did you know that absolute rulers such as Louis XIV of France also built huge palaces designed to intimidate ordinary citizens? Let’s take a look.

The best example of an over-the-top palace built by an absolute ruler is the Palace of Versailles, built by Louis XIV. Versailles is about a day’s trip outside of Paris (by horse and buggy) so when Louis moved his court there, it was the ultimate power play. Now, nobles had to make a long journey to visit the king.



Louis XIII’s “chateau” at Versailles wasn’t quite grand enough for his son. When Louis XIV became king, he decided to do some renovating. Above is the “before” shot of Versailles … 


… And here’s the “after” shot. Maybe Louis XIV watched a little too much “Extreme Home Makeover.”

Versailles is magnificent on the outside and the inside. Using Google Maps, you can take a virtual tour of the outside of Versailles here. Versailles is famous for its acres of gardens and multiple fountains. 210,000 flowers are planted at Versailles every year. 50 fountains use up to 3,600 cubic meters of water an hour!

Of course, Louis XIV wanted a magnificent interior, too. The palace is a huge art museum. Its 700 rooms boast 6,000 paintings, 1,500 drawings, 15,000 engravings, and 2,100 sculptures. You can take an in-depth tour of the interior of Versailles and learn about the artwork here.

Your assignment is to complete the following webquest using the Palace of Versailles official website.

Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous: Versailles Webquest

You’ll be writing or typing the answers to all of these questions in complete sentences. 

On the left hand side of your page, under the word “Explore” click on “The Palace.”

1.    Which French king originally built the palace?    
2.    Which French king expanded the palace? What year was it expanded?          

In the upper right corner, click on “Discover the Palace.” Click on the picture in the upper left of the Hall of Mirrors.

3.    Why might someone build something so grand?

Close the picture of the Hall of Mirrors.

4.    According to the website, what was the hall used for?

Under “Explore the Estate: The Palace” click on “The Queen’s Grand Apartment.” To the Left, click on the picture of “The Queen’s Chamber.”

5.    Why do you think there was a railing and chairs surrounding the bed?  Who might be using the chairs?

Under “Explore the Estate: The Palace” click on “The Royal Chapel”

6.    In French monarchy, what was the relationship between God and the monarch?

At the top of the page, click on “History.”  Then, in the upper right, click on “A Day in the Life of Louis XIV.”

7.    What types of people do you think would have wanted to attend the King’s awakening?
8.    Describe the First Levee.
9.    What was the king’s favorite sport?

At the top of the page, under “Versailles Through The Centuries” click on “Royal Tables.”

10.    How long did dinner take? How many “meal services” were prepared for the King?

The Columbian Exchange: Positive or Negative?

When Christopher Columbus arrived in the West Indies late in the 15th century, he brought more than ships. His arrival heralded a historic exchange between the cultures of the Western and Eastern Hemispheres, which until then had had essentially no contact for millions of years. Each hemisphere had developed unique peoples, plants, animals, diseases, and cultures. In introducing each hemisphere to the other, the Columbian Exchange transformed the lives of people at both ends of the journey, then and forever after.

The agricultural exchange between Europe and the Americas introduced both sides to plants and foods they had never seen before. Many of those foods, like tomatoes in Italy, now form cornerstones of cultural cuisine. Other foods or plant products to travel east from the Americas included cacao (chocolate), potatoes, corn, sweet potatoes, squash, strawberries, quinine (for treating malaria), and various flowers. Such foods as sugar, tea, and coffee made the trip west toward the Americas. Grains like wheat and rice, various fruits including oranges and grapes, and such vegetables as lettuce and radishes also broadened the American diet. In time, Europeans also brought vegetation to America—flowers and grasses as well as more destructive weeds. In addition to expanding diets, the edible exchange led to trading and economic patterns, including the growth of slavery, which supported sugar and tobacco production.



Most of the animal transfers in the Columbian Exchange traveled westward toward the Americas. Horses, pigs, sheep, goats, cattle, and rats had dramatic effects on the Native American populations. In particular, horses brought hunting and movement opportunities to Native Americans, while pigs provided a regular source of meat. On the negative side, pigs destroyed a lot of local vegetation and animal life. Rats, of course, were also less useful and largely spread diseases. Europeans also encountered some animals they hadn’t seen before, for example, the buffalo and rattlesnake. Again, beyond the actual exchange of animals, the interaction brought cultural change to the Americas. Hunting on horseback helped to spread Native American populations westward, for example.

Europeans also brought their religion (primarily Catholicism in the Columbian period), their weapons, and their iron tools. Those all changed the lives of Native Americans dramatically: religion affected cultural practices and belief systems, guns subdued populations and later advanced hunting techniques, and tools transformed agricultural practices. Unlike the plant and animal exchanges, the cultural exchange clearly favored Europe and left the Americas tremendously vulnerable to the exploitation that followed.

Columbus and those who followed him brought people to the Americas—Europeans of all kinds and later African slaves to fill the plantation system’s labor needs. With the early arrivals came diseases unheard of in the Western Hemisphere. Smallpox alone killed an estimated 50-90% of existing populations. In the other direction, at least one disease—syphilis—traveled to Europe and did tremendous damage in the years to follow.  However, the French historian Fernand Braudel argues that, despite the Columbian Exchange’s tragic consequences, over the long term the exchange of edible plants increased rather than decreased the human population on Earth by contributing calories to the human diet.


Answer the following questions in complete sentences.

1. Why was the introduction of corn and potatoes to Europe and Asia so significant?

2. How did the introduction of European livestock change the lives of Native Americans?

3. What foods or plants brought to America by the Columbian exchange do you think play the biggest role today in the U.S. diet and economy?

4. Do you agree with Braudel’s theory (the bold statement above)? Why or why not? What other factors can you name that might increase or decrease the amount of food available to people worldwide?

Renaissance Art

Study the paintings below. For each painting, write 1-2 complete sentences summarizing the main idea of the painting’s relationship to Renaissance life and the philosophy of humanism.

1. Raphael: School of Athens


2. Quentin Massys: A Money-Changer and his Wife


3. Leonardo da Vinci: Proportional Study of a Man in the Manner of Vitruvius


4. Albrecht Durer: Portrait of Erasmus of Rotterdam


5. Pieter Bruegel: Summer (1568)

Renaissance Humanism

To understand Renaissance Humanism, we have to get to the source: the writers and thinkers that embodied these ideas.

First, write a definition of Renaissance Humanism in your own words.

Now, read the following quotes by Renaissance men. For each quote, write 1-2 sentences describing how the author and his thoughts reflect the spirit of humanism. 

1. “What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving, how express and admirable in action, how like an angel in apprehension [understanding], how like a god! The beauty of the world; the paragon of animals” – Shakespeare, Hamlet

2. “I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.” – Leonardo Da Vinci

3. “With the forethought that we are mortal, and that every adversity can befall us, let us do what the wise have so highly praised: let us work so that past and present will contribute to the times that have not yet come … To you, (man) is given a body more graceful than other animals, to you power of apt and various movements, to you most sharp and delicate senses, to you wit, reason, memory like an immortal god… A man can do all things if he will.” – Leon Battista Alberti

4. “It is the chiefest point of happiness that a man is willing to be what he is.” – Desiderius Erasmus

5. “How beautiful is youth, which is always slipping away! Whoever wants to be happy, let him be so: of tomorrow there’s no knowing.” – Lorenzo De’ Medici

6. “Man in truth is a marvelous, vain, fickle, and unstable subject.” – Michel de Montaigne

7. “The brave man carves out his fortune, and every man is the son of his own works.” – Miguel de Cervantes

8. “I have come to understand why man is the most fortunate of creatures and consequently worthy of all admiration and what precisely is that rank which is his lot in the universal chain of Being — a rank to be envied not only by brutes but even by the stars and by minds beyond this world. It is a matter past faith and a wondrous one. Why should it not be? For it is on this very account that man is rightly called and judged a great miracle and a wonderful creature indeed.” – Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man

9. “For what folly would it be to pass all one’s life in toil and poverty and care, heaping up riches, just to die at last and have no time to enjoy them?” – Petrarch,  the “father of Humanism”

10. "Take as a model a leader who's been much praised and admired and keep his examples and achievements in mind at all times," Machiavelli, author of The Prince

Renaissance Art Film Festival

Welcome to the Renaissance Art Film Festival! Watch three of the five short films below and answer the questions that follow, using information from the films as well as your knowledge of the Renaissance. Your answers should be 3-4 sentences each. Include information that you've learned about the Renaissance and its guiding idea of humanism in your answer. 

Choice 1: "How to Find the True Face of Leonardo da Vinci" below.

After watching this film, explain why you think we know (or still don't know) what da Vinci looks like. Are the primary sources Woldhek used in the talk reliable? 

Choice 2: "Dissecting Botticelli's Adoration of the Magi" below.
What does this film tell you about the relationship between art and political power in 15th century Florence? 

Choice 3: "The Many Meanings of Michelangelo's David" below. 

Is a work of art limited when it's tied to a location? Are truly great art pieces relevant to all places and times? Explain your answer. 

Choice 4: "Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man of Math" below.
If this image accurately demonstrates many different cultural trends of Leonardo's time period, what image or images do the same for ours? 

Choice 5: "What 'Machiavellian' Really Means" below.

Why do you think Machiavelli's The Prince continues to be so shocking and notorious to this day? Do you see The Prince influencing any modern political movements or trends? 

Machiavelli: Do the Ends Justify the Means?

Niccolo Machiavelli was an Italian writer and politician during the Renaissance. Machiavelli worked for the government of Florence, but lost his job when the Medici family was forced out of power. It was then that Machiavelli began to write about politics, specifically realism: how the world worked instead of how it should work.

Machiavelli's most famous work was The Prince, written in 1513. In The Prince, Machiavelli discusses how leaders can get and maintain power. He argues that a leader's authority comes from power, and that rulers who are strong and have lots of power will stay in control, no matter if they are good or evil. It was important, Machiavelli argued, to have a strong ruler, because that's how city-states and countries could protect themselves.

Machiavelli's most famous idea is that "the ends justify the means." What he meant by that is that a ruler who wants to stay in power must be prepared to do anything -- even things that are evil or cruel. According to Machiavelli, the only thing that makes people obey laws is the threat of force. Therefore, in order to stay in charge, a ruler had to keep people afraid. Today, people who will do anything to achieve their goals are described as "Machiavellian."

The Prince has been a popular book throughout history. Rulers and politicians the world over have used Machiavelli's ideas to justify their behavior.

Click here to read 11 lessons from The Prince still relevant today. Which lesson do you think is the most important? If the first link doesn't work, try this one. 

 The Prince is sometimes described as an instruction manual for those who want political power. But is there ever a situation where the goal is so important that it doesn't matter what method is used to achieve it? With a neighbor, three of these goals and explain what means would and would not be justified. Write down your answers; we will be using these in a class discussion.

•     Defend the country against a foreign invasion
•     Protect your home from a burglar
•     Get into the college of your choice
•     Stay (or become) popular in school
•     Make people obey a recycling law