The Palace of Versailles was built by Louis XIV and has 1,000 staff. Now a museum visited by nearly 20 million people a year and a venue for grand state occasions, President of the Public Establishment receives an ‘annual consolidated budget of the Public Establishment for around €100 million’, according to the Versailles website. The position is currently held by Catherine Pégard, a political journalist, 68, who had no cultural background when sent to Versailles by President Sarkozy in 2011 after serving as an adviser. Macron’s decision to appoint a new president of the palace has sparked claims that ‘monarch-like, he is showering favours on former members of his administration,’ according to the Times.
Versailles castle
Stuart Robertson / Alamy Stock Photo
The imminent appointment is likely to confirm the president’s monarchical prerogative ‘to the point of giving command of the palace to someone with a political profile who has never held the least post in a cultural institution’, French news source Le Figaro said. It went on to speculate that ‘If the appointment of Jean-Michel Blanquer were confirmed, it would prove, once again, that the estate of the Palace of Versailles, a place of history, remains a presidential “reserved area”, in the same way as Defense and Foreign Affairs, to the point of entrusting the reins to a political profile who has never held any position in a cultural institution.’
