André Le Nôtre in the context of "Charles Le Brun"

The Gardens of Versailles (French: Jardins du château de Versailles [ʒaʁdɛ̃ dy ʃɑto d(ə) vɛʁsɑj]) occupy part of what was once the Domaine royal de Versailles, the royal demesne of the château of Versailles. Situated to the west of the palace, the gardens cover some 800 ha (2,000 acres) of land, much of which is landscaped in the classic French formal garden style perfected here by André Le Nôtre. Beyond the surrounding belt of woodland, the gardens are bordered by the urban areas of Versailles to the east and Le Chesnay to the north-east, by the National Arboretum de Chèvreloup to the north, the Versailles plain (a protected wildlife preserve) to the west, and by the Satory Forest to the south.

Administered by the Public Establishment of the Palace, Museum and National Estate of Versailles, an autonomous public entity operating under the aegis of the French Ministry of Culture, the gardens are now one of the most visited public sites in France, receiving more than six million visitors a year.

The French formal garden, also called the jardin à la française (French for 'garden in the French manner'), is a style of "landscape" garden based on symmetry and the principle of imposing order on nature. Its epitome is generally considered to be the Gardens of Versailles designed during the 17th century by the landscape architect André Le Nôtre for Louis XIV and widely copied by other European courts.

Classicism was also expressed in horticulture. Jean-Baptiste de La Quintinie introduced an art of fruit pruning and bedding techniques that were to have a lasting impact on production gardens. But the term ‘classical garden’ was only used for pleasure gardens.

Grand Siècle (French pronunciation: [ɡʁɑ̃ sjɛkl]) or Great Century refers to the period of French history during the 17th century, under the reigns of Louis XIII and Louis XIV.

The period was notable for its development of art, music and literature, along with the construction of the Palace of Versailles, the effects of the French Wars of Religion, and the impacts of the Thirty Years' War, which made France the dominant power in Europe instead of Spain. Significant figures during this period include gardener André Le Nôtre, architects François Mansart, Louis Le Vau and Jules Hardouin-Mansart, painters Nicolas Poussin, Simon Vouet, Claude Lorrain, Georges de La Tour, Philippe de Champaigne, Charles Le Brun, sculptors Pierre Puget, François Girardon and Antoine Coysevox, playwrights Pierre Corneille, Molière and Jean Racine, the poets François de Malherbe, Jean de La Fontaine and Nicolas Boileau, writers Madame de La Fayette, Charles Perrault, composers Henri Dumont, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Michel Richard Delalande, André Campra, Henri Desmarest, Marin Marais and François Couperin, philosophers René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Antoine Arnauld, Nicolas Malebranche, Pierre Gassendi, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyere, and Pierre Bayle.