History of the Palace of Versailles round towers. The vignette also shows a garden on the western side of the château with a fountain on the central axis and rectangular planted "parterres" to either side. Louis XIV had played and hunted at the site as a boy. With a few modifications, this structure would become the core of the new palace. Louis XIII's successor, Louis XIV, had a great interest in Versailles. He settled on the royal hunting lodge at Versailles, and over the following decades had it expanded into one of the largest palaces in the world. Beginning in 1661, the architect Louis Le Vau,
History of the Palace of Versailles but was never finished due to the king's death. Significant among Louis XV's contributions to Versailles were the "petit appartement du roi"; the "appartements de Mesdames", the "appartement du dauphin", the "appartement de la dauphine" on the ground floor; and the two private apartments of Louis XV – "petit appartement du roi au deuxième étage" (later transformed into the "appartement de Madame du Barry") and the "petit appartement du roi au troisième étage" – on the second and third floors of the palace. The crowning achievements of Louis XV's reign were the construction of the Opéra and the Petit Trianon.