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Chateau Of MarlyAt the Chateau of Marly Louis XIV of France escaped from the formal rigors he had constructed at Versailles. The chateau is no more, the hydraulic "machine" that pumped water for Versailles is no more. The foundation of Jules Hardouin-Mansart's chateau remain at the top of the slope in Marly park. Small rooms meant fewer company, and simplified protocol, but courtiers fought so for invitations to Marly that guest houses were built in matching pairs flanking the central sheets of water that were fed one from the other by prim formalized cascades. Louis' heirs found Marly damp and dreary and rarely visited. After the revolution, in 1800, it was sold to an industrialist, who installed machinery spinning cotton thread. When the factory failed, the chateau was demolished. The empty gardens and the surrounding woodland park still belong to the State. The town that originally grew up to service the chateau is now a dormitory community for Paris. The Marly "machine" The "machine" was a miracle of modern hydraulic engineering that pumped water 100 meters into reservoirs at Louveciennes (where Mme du Barry had a dining pavilion in the 1760s), whence it flowed to fill the cascade at Marly (when the king was there) and the fountains at Versailles (when the king was there). In the 19th century, various other pumps replaced the originals, and the last was taken out of service in 1967.
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