Enfilade (architecture) - Baroque Palaces

Baroque Palaces

In a Baroque palace, access down an enfilade suite of state rooms was typically restricted by the rank or degree of intimacy of the visitor. The first rooms were more public, and at the end was usually the bedroom, sometimes with an intimate cabinet or boudoir beyond. Baroque protocol dictated that visitors of lower rank than their host would be escorted by servants down the enfilade to the farthest room their status allowed. If the visitor was of equal or higher access, the host would himself advance down the enfilade to meet his guest, before taking him back. At parting, the same ritual would be observed, though the host might pay his guest a compliment by taking him back further than his rank strictly dictated. If a person of much higher rank visited, these rituals extended beyond the enfilade to the entrance hall, the gates to the palace, or beyond (in modern State visits, to the airport). Memoirs and letters of the period often note the exact details of where meetings and partings occurred, even to whether they were in the centre of the room, or at the door.