<P> During the French Revolution, after the royal family's forced move to Paris on 6 October 1789, three years before the fall of the monarchy, Versailles fell into disrepair and most of the furniture was sold . Some restoration work was undertaken by Napoleon in 1810 and Louis XVIII in 1820, but the principal effort to restore and maintain Versailles was initiated by Louis - Philippe, when he created the Musée de l'Histoire de France, dedicated to "all the glories of France". The museum is located in the Aile du Midi (South Wing), which during the Ancien Régime had been used to lodge the members of the royal family . It was begun in 1833 and inaugurated on 30 June 1837 . Its most famous room is the Galerie des Batailles (Hall of Battles), which lies on most of the length of the second floor . </P> <P> Neglect after October 1789, when the royal family had to leave Versailles, and the ravages of war in parts of the 19th and 20th centuries have left their mark on the palace and its park . Post-World War II governments have sought to repair these damages . On the whole, they have been successful, but some of the more costly items, such as the vast array of fountains, have yet to be put back completely in service . As spectacular as they might seem now, they were even more extensive in the 18th century . The 18th - century waterworks at Marly--the Machine de Marly that fed the fountains--was possibly the biggest mechanical system of its time . The water came in from afar on monumental stone aqueducts which have long ago fallen into disrepair or been torn down . Some aqueducts, such as the unfinished Canal de l'Eure, which passes through the gardens of the château de Maintenon, were never completed for want of resources or due to the exigencies of war . The search for sufficient supplies of water was never fully realised even during the apogee of the reign of the Sun King, as the fountains could not be operated together satisfactorily for any significant periods of time . </P> <P> The restoration initiatives launched by the Fifth Republic have proven to be perhaps more costly than the expenditures of the palace in the Ancien Régime . Starting in the 1950s, when the museum of Versailles was under the directorship of Gérald van der Kemp, the objective was to restore the palace to its state--or as close to it as possible--in 1789 when the royal family left the palace . Among the early projects was the repair of the roof over the Hall of Mirrors; the publicity campaign brought international attention to the plight of post-war Versailles and garnered much foreign money including a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation . Concurrently, in the Soviet Union (Russia since 26 December 1991), the restoration of the Pavlovsk Palace located 25 kilometers from the center of Leningrad--today's Saint Petersburg--brought the attention of French Ministry of Culture, including that of the curator of Versailles . </P> <P> Pavlovsk Palace was built by Catherine the Great's son Paul . The czarevitch and his wife, Marie Feodorovna, were ardent francophiles, who, on a visit to France and Versailles in May and June 1782, purchased great quantities of silk, which they later used to upholster furniture in Pavlovsk . The palace survived the Russian Revolution intact--descendants of Paul I were living in the palace at the time the communists evicted them--however, during the Second World War, the furniture and artifacts housed in the palace, which had been transformed into a museum, were removed . In the process of evacuation the museum collections, remnants of the silks purchased by Paul I of Russia and Marie Feodorovna were found and preserved . After the war when Soviet authorities were restoring the palace, which had been gutted by the retreating Nazi forces, they recreated the silk fabrics by using the preserved 18th - century remnants . </P>

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