At first blush, a tour of The Breakers might feel like roaming the halls of an American Versailles, if all we notice is the grandeur and expense. But roaming Versailles’s Hall of Mirrors in sneakers, taking pictures with abandon, is a revolutionary act—after all, the French palace, once a center of government and divine-right power, was seized by the people and never given back. The Breakers was the center of attention, the center of fame, and the center of envy without being a center of power. The house stands as a temple to excess.
