Machine de Marly

Water features form an impressive part of the gardens in the Palace of Versailles in Paris. There are fountains, cascading waterfalls, calm pools and grand canals. Close to the palace, by the two water parterres are a series of sculptures depicting wild animals in fight—a lion conquering a wild boar, a tiger subduing a bear and a bloodhound bringing down a stag. From the mouth of each of these animals water gushes into a basin. The Dragon Fountain, which is actually a python, is one of the oldest at Versailles and shoots water 27 meters high. The Latona Fountain, which illustrates the story of Latona from the Metamorphoses of Ovid, is the grandest with four levels decorated with figures of frogs, lizards and turtles. The Fountain of Apollo at the Palace of Versailles. Image credit:  S-F / Shutterstock.com From the very beginning, supplying water to these fountains was a major problem for the architects. The nearest body of water, the Seine River, was located ten kilometers away, and the palace itself was nearly five hundred feet above sea level. A solution to the problem was submitted by a young and ambitious lawyer named Arnold de Ville, who despite his lack of formal training in the field of engineering had successfully built a hydraulic machine to draw water from a river and supply Château de Modave back in his homeland in Belgium. de Ville submitted a similar design for the Palace of Versailles, only this was to be several times larger in magnitude. Louis XIV was so impressed by the de Ville’s plan that he entrusted him with the development of a machine on the Seine to supply not only the gardens of Versailles, but also those of the Chateau of Marly, which was then under construction. The Latona Fountain. Image credit: Eli Sagor/Flickr In 1681, construction of this unprecedented hydraulic pump called Machine de Marly began at a site 7 km north of the Château de Versailles.