Un mythe ambigu : les « Versailles d’Italie » (xixe-xxe siècle)

Abstract

From the end of the eighteenth century to the present day it has been the practice to refer to such and such a royal palace in Italy as ‘the Italian Versailles’. Today, this expression is essentially used for what could be described as marketing ends. The aim is to glorify the residence in question, to compare it to the Sun King’s palace, in order to highlight its unique value and character. It is in fact a slogan. And this slogan is frequently used in a campanilismo spirit in order to assert the superiority of the royal palace of one former Italian state over the royal palace of another former state: Caserta against Monza, for example. This approach is linked, for the most part, to sometimes vigorous municipal debates, often stoked by contemporary Italian politics. But this has not always been the case: in the nineteenth century, the expression ‘the Italian Versailles’ had a highly negative political signification. Indeed, several historians and progressive politicians used the expression to condemn the Ancien Régime, of which the French palace was, in their eyes, the most complete symbol. Thus, in the poem Versaglia written by Giosuè Carducci in 1871, the description of the palace and the gardens was above all a pretext for celebrating the death of the Ancien Régime. The present essay aims to analyse the political use of the expression ‘the Italian Versailles’ during the period 1780–1918 and to reconstruct the place that the Sun King’s palace left in the Italian political imagination between the end of the Ancien Régime and Unification.

Keywords

• national identity
• campanilismo
• Risorgimento
• Carducci (Giosuè)
• history of representations
• Caserta