The research illustrates the singular bivalence of the construction of the Grand Canal in the Palace of Versailles, in the seventeenth century: this body of water, more commonly interpreted as the design axis of the grandiose composition of the park and as the scene of celebrations of court splendor, was, in a sort of double life, the basin necessary for the attempt to develop checks and tests for war and merchant hulls.

This peculiarity, especially if placed in relation to the tradition of the naumachia of the classical and Renaissance periods, constitutes an important testimony to the importance of naval culture and development which, precisely in the following century, will find its full evolution and scientific expression.

If at the time of Louis XIV the Science of Naval Architecture, in fact, had not yet reached a complete methodological structure, in these episodes of empirical studies we can read the prodromes of thought and organization that would follow and of which Gaspard Monge and Duhamel de Monceau would be protagonists.