King Felipe VI has an intense official schedule ahead of him. On Monday, the Spanish head of state was in Madrid, where he held meetings with various ambassadors at the Royal Palace before going to the Palace of Zarzuela on the outskirts of the city, where he received Kyriákos Mitsotákis, the Prime Minister of Greece. On Tuesday, he traveled to Paris, where French President Emmanuel Macron welcomed him at the Elysée Palace for a luncheon in his honor.
It’s his second trip to France in recent weeks. Last week, Felipe joined his mother, Queen Sofia, and his sisters, Princess Elena and Princess Cristina, to say goodbye to their cousin Tatiana Radziwill, who died on December. Radziwill was a great friend of the emeritus queen. This private trip, outside the official agenda, was endearing gesture of the king toward his mother and a public reunion with his sisters. This week’s trip to Paris is for official business, and the king is traveling without his wife, Queen Letizia. (On Monday, she visited the Royal Tapestry Factory in Madrid for the presentation of the Zenda Awards for fashion.)
While in Paris this week, Macron and the king traveled to Versailles to attend the opening of an exhibition called The Grand Dauphin: Son of a King, Father of a King, but Never a King. The show examines the life of Louis, the Grand Dauphin of France, son of Louis XIV (known as the Sun King), whose 72-year reign remains the longest in the history of the monarchy. The Dauphin, on the other hand, spent his entire life in the shadow of his father, without ever reigning. He died of smallpox at the age of 49.
The exhibition aims to recognize a great collector, as well as a central man in the history of the French and Spanish monarchies. Before his death, the dauphin saw his son, Philip V, ascend to the Spanish throne. He founded the Spanish Bourbon branch that has lasted more than 300 years, and its lineage includes Felipe VI.
The exhibition reconstructs the life of the Grand Dauphin from his birth, surveing his education and passion for the arts. His father said he was the “best educated prince in the history of the country,” says the curator Lionel Arsac, who gathered an exceptional personal collection. The exhibition contains 250 works related to his life, some never before exhibited. It includes the monumental Alari d’Algarda from the Wallace Collection in London, jewels from the Prado and Louvre Museums, or a pair of chests of drawers from the Spanish royal collections.
Felipe VI’s visit to Paris is is a milestone in history: it is the first time a Spanish king has (officially) visited Versailles in more than 120 years. As reported by Point de Vue, the team of the Palace of Versailles’s director, Chirstophe Leribault, had to turn to the archives of the institution to find the last monarch to visit the great Parisian palace. The last Bourbon to pass through the palace gates was Alfonso XIII, which occurred on June 2, 1905.
Originally published in Vanity Fair Spain.
