Versailles Gardens

Versailles Gardens Review

Fountains and statues of luminaries and legends (such as Napoléon and Josephine, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, David Livingstone, Hercules, and Mephistopheles) adorn Versailles Gardens, the terraced lawn at the One & Only Ocean Club, once the private hideaway of Huntington Hartford. At the top of the gardens stand the Cloisters, the remains of a stone monastery built by Augustinian monks in France in the 13th century. They were imported to the United States in the 1920s by newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst. (The cloister is one of four to have ever been removed from French soil.) Forty years later, Hartford bought the Cloisters and had them rebuilt on their present commanding site. At the center is a graceful, contemporary white marble statue called Silence, by U.S. sculptor Dick Reid. Nearly every day, tourists take or renew wedding vows under the delicately wrought gazebo overlooking Nassau Harbour. Although the garden is owned by the One & Only Ocean Club, visitors are welcome so long as they check in at the security gate.