Paris Versailles

By sheer force of ego, the Sun King converted a hunting lodge into the world’s most famous palace. The sprawling château and gardens testify to Louis XIV’s absolute power, and absolute ego. What started off as extravagance became absurdity during the reign of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette; it takes only one visit to this royal playground to understand why the (starving) rest of the country got their culottes all up in a bunch and staged a revolution (see Life and Times). Versailles still glitters with the sheen of excess luxury, but at least now nobody gets beheaded for enjoying it.

Transportation: RER trains beginning with “V” run from Invalides or any stop on RER Line C5 to the Versailles Rive Gauche station (30-40min., departs approx. every 15min., €5.60 round-trip). Buy your RER ticket before going through the turnstile to the platform; when purchasing from a machine, look for the Île-de-France ticket option. While a metro ticket will get you through these turnstiles, it will not get you through RER turnstiles at Versailles and could ultimately result in a significant fine. From the RER Versailles station, turn right down av. de Général de Gaulle, walk 200m, and turn left at the first big intersection on avenue de Paris; the entrance to the château is straight ahead. Like pornography, you’ll know it when you see it.
Tourist Office: Office de Tourisme de Versailles, 2bis avenue de Paris (☎01 39 24 88 88; www.versailles-tourisme.com). From the RER Versailles train station, follow directions to the château; the office will be on your left before the château courtyard. A great place to plan your Versailles exploration before succumbing to the palace’s tourist mayhem. The office has info on local accommodations, events, restaurants, and sightseeing buses. Also sells tickets for historical, guided tours of the town. Open Oct.-Mar. M 11am-5pm, Tu-Su 9am-6pm; Apr.-Sept. Tu-Su 9am-6pm.
Food: While numerous tourist-focused eateries—including a MacDo—exist along the walk from the train station to the palace, packed picnics present the most enjoyable and affordable warm-weather solution; munch on a cheap baguette or light quiche snagged from a Parisian boulangerie while you sprawl out near the Swiss Lake. On the weekends, many French locals do the same, still profiting from Louis XIV’s greediness. Moderately priced snack bars occupy various hidden niches off the main pathway leading up to the castle, and food at over-priced restaurants is available just outside the garden gates.

Sights

Palace History. When Louis XIV was just 10 years old, a mob invaded his bedroom in Paris during the Fronde (a civil war among nobles). Traumatized by the malodorous commoners, he decided to move his government away from the politically unreliable capital to the safety of Versailles. In 1661, the Sun King renovated the small hunting lodge in Versailles and enlisted the help of architect Louis Le Vau, painter Charles Le Brun, and landscape architect André Le Nôtre (all of Vaux-le-Vicomte fame) just months after their previous patron, Nicolas Fouquet, had been sentenced to lifetime imprisonment (see Vaux-le-Vicomte). Indeed, Versailles’s Vaux-esque fountains and grandiloquent scale provided a not-so-subtle reminder of the monarchy’s power. The Versailles court soon became the nucleus of noble life, where France’s aristocrats vied for the king’s favor and navigated a highly structured social hierarchy.

No one knows just how much it cost to build Versailles; Louis XIV burned the accounts. Though every aspect of life was a minutely choreographed public spectacle, things there were less luxurious than one might imagine: courtiers wore rented swords and urinated behind statues in the parlors, wine froze in the drafty dining rooms, and dressmakers invented the color puce (literally, “flea”) to camouflage the bugs crawling on the noblewomen. The king also lacked the necessary funds to keep all his fountains flowing at once; instead he had his gardeners turn the water on and off to correspond to his guest’s pre-chosen walking path, giving the illusion that all the fountains functioned continuously. Louis XIV died on September 1, 1715; his great-grandson Louis XV succeeded him. Louis XV commissioned the North Wing Opera for the marriage of Austrian Marie-Antoinette to his grandson, the crowned prince or dauphin. The newlyweds inherited the throne and Versailles when Louis XV died in 1774. The new king Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette barely changed the château’s exterior, but they did create Marie-Antoinette’s personal pretend playland, the hameau. The Queen would spend hours in her hamlet village, pretending to live simply like a peasant. On October 5, 1789, 15,000 National Guardsmen and angry Parisian stormed Versailles and brought the royal family back to Paris, where Louis and his wife would eventually be victims of the Revolution.

During the 19th century, King Louis-Philippe established a museum to preserve the château, against the wishes of many Frenchmen; Louis Philippe’s opponents wanted Versailles demolished, preferring it to share the Bastille’s fate (see Sights). In 1871, the château regained historical importance when King Wilhelm of Prussia became Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany in the Hall of Mirrors. That same year, as headquarters of the conservative Thiers regime, Versailles sent an army against the Paris Commune. The Versaillais pierced the city walls and crushed the Communards. On June 28, 1919, the Hall of Mirrors was again the setting for a momentous occasion, this time the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, a document ending WWI and instituting a flawed peace.

Guided Tours. By arriving early in the morning, you can avoid the heavy crowds who swarm the château on Sundays from May to September and especially in late June. Figuring out how to get into the château is the hardest part, as there are half a dozen entrances. Most visitors enter at Entrance A, located on the right-hand side in the north wing, or Entrance C, located in the archway to the left. Both locations rent audio guides for €6-10. Entrance B is reserved for groups, Entrance D is where guided tours begin, and Entrance H is for visitors in wheelchairs. General admission grants entry to the following notable rooms: the Grands Appartements, the War and Peace Drawing Rooms, the Galerie des Glaces (Hall of Mirrors), and Marie-Antoinette’s public apartment, the hameau. From Entrance D, at the left-hand corner as you approach the palace, you can choose between seventeen different English- or French-language guided tours each exploring a different area or theme. After the tour, you’ll be able to explore the rest of Versailles on your own, without waiting in the general admission line. To avoid a long wait for guided tours, arrive before 11am. (☎01 30 83 78 89; www.chateauversailles.fr. Château open Tu-Su Apr.-Oct. 9am-6:30pm, Nov.-Mar. 9am-5:30pm. Last entry 30min. before closing. Admission to palace and self-guided tour through Entrance A €8, after 3:30pm €6, under 18 free. Supplement with 1hr. audio tour €6. 1-day pass is self-guided but includes entrance to the private apartments, temporary exhibitions, and the Grand and Petit Trianons, as well as the usual Grands Apartments, Mesdames Apartments, and the Hall of Mirrors on weekends; pass also includes audio guides for both the Grands and private apartments. 1-day pass Sa-Su in summer over 18 €25; in winter €16. Guided tours €22, under 18 €5.50. For group discounts and reservations call ☎08 10 81 16 14.)

Self-Guided Tours. With a general admission ticket or day pass, you can begin at Entrance A and start your visit in the Musée de l’Histoire de France, created in 1837 by Louis-Philippe to celebrate his country’s glory. The 21 rooms, arranged in chronological order, lay out a historical context for the château. The museum occasionally closes with no fixed schedule, so be sure to call.

Up the main staircase to the right, the king heard mass in the dual-level royal chapel. Architect Hardouin-Mansat constructed the chapel from 1699-1710. Back toward and to the left of the staircase, a series of gilded drawing rooms in the State Apartments are dedicated to Roman gods like Hercules, Mars, and the ever-present Apollo (the Sun King identified with the sun god, naturally). The ornate Salon d’Apollo was Louis XIV’s throne room. The French citizens demonstrated great respect for the king’s prestige, bowing or curtseying when passing the throne, even when it was empty. The War and Peace Drawing Rooms frame the recently-renovated Hall of Mirrors, originally a terrace until Mansart added a series of mirrored panels and windows to double the light in the room and reflect the gardens outside. These mirrors were the largest that 17th-century technology could produce and therefore an unthinkable extravagance. Le Brun’s ceiling paintings (1679-1686) tell the history of Louis XIV’s heroism, culminating with The King Governs Alone.

The Queen’s Bedchamber, where royal births were made public in order to prove the legitimacy of the heirs, appears exactly as the Queen last left it on October 6, 1789. A version of Le Sacre de Napoleon (1808) by David depicting Napoleon’s self-coronation dominates the Salle du Sacré (also known as the Coronation Room). The Hall of Battles, installed by Louis-Philippe, is a monument to 14 centuries of France’s military.

Gardens. Numerous artists, including Coysevox, Le Brun, and Mansart created statues and fountains for Versailles’s gardens, but master gardener André Le Nôtre provided the overall plan. Louis XIV wrote the first guide to the gardens, entitled the Manner of Presenting the Gardens at Versailles. Today the grounds remain a spectacular example of obsessive landscaping with neatly trimmed rectangular hedges lining the geometric bosquets (groves). The Sun King added further visual intricacies to his design; by making the cross-shaped canal wider on its western most end, he created a perspective-defying illusion evident when viewed from the terrace.

Though the château offers several different 1.5hr. tours of the gardens, the best way to visit the park is during the spectacular summer festival, Les Grandes Eaux Musicales. Weekends and holidays from Apr.-Sept., almost all the fountains are turned on at the same time and chamber music groups perform among the groves (see Festivals). Any self-guided tour of the gardens must begin, as the Sun King commanded, on the terrace. To the left of the terrace, the Parterre Sud graces the area in front of Mansart’s Orangerie, once home to 2000 orange trees; the temperature inside still never drops below 6°C (43°F). In the center of the terrace lie the fountains of the Parterre d’Eau, while down the steps, the Bassin de Latone features Latona, the mother of Diana and Apollo, shielding her children as Jupiter turns villains into frogs. For a truly spectacular fountain finale, make your way to the Bassin of Neptune at 5:20pm, to the right of the castle and behind the Bassin du Dragon.

Past the Bassin de Latone and to the left is one of the Versailles gardens’ undisputed gems: the fragrant, flower-lined sanctuary of the Jardin du Roi, accessible only from the easternmost side facing the Bassin du Miroir. Near the grove’s south gate lies the magnificent Bassin de Bacchus, one of four seasonal fountains depicting the Greek god of wine crowned in vine branches reclining on a bunch of grapes. Behind the Bassin de Bacchus, the Bosquet de la Salle de Bal features a semi-circle of cascading waterfalls and torch holders enabling royal revelers to host late-night balls; a large clearing in the middle provided ample space for dancing and merrymaking. Working your way north toward the center of the garden brings you to the exquisite Bosquet de la Colonnade, where the king used to take light meals amid 32 violet and blue marble columns, sculptures, and white marble basins. The north gate to the Colonnade exits onto the 330m long Tapis Vert (Green Carpet), the central mall linking the château to the garden’s conspicuously central fountain, the Bassin d’Apollon, whose charioted Apollo rises out of the water to enlighten the world.

On the garden’s north side, you’ll find the incredible Bosquet de l’Encelade. When the fountains on, a 25m high jet bursts from Titan’s enormous mouth, which is plated with shimmering gold and half buried under rocks. Flora reclines on a bed of flowers in the Bassin de Flore, while a gilded Ceres luxuriates in wheat sheaves in the Bassin de Cérès. The Parterre Nord, full of flowers, lawns, and trees, overlooks some of the garden’s most spectacular fountains. The Allée d’Eau, a fountain-lined walkway, provides the best view of the Bassin des Nymphes de Diane. The path slopes toward the sculpted D Bassin du Dragon, where a beast slain by Apollo spurts water 27m into the air. Next to the Bassin du Dragon, 99 jets of water issue from sea horns encircling Neptune in the Bassin de Neptune, the gardens’ largest fountain.

Beyond Le Nôtre’s classical gardens stretch wilder farmland, meadows, and woods perfect for a picnic away from the Versailles’s manicured perfection. Stroll along the Grand Canal , a rectangular pond beyond the Bassin d’Apollon that measures an impressive 1535m long. To explore destinations farther afield around Versailles, rent a bike or a boat, or go for a horse-drawn carriage ride. ( Gardens open daily Apr.-Oct. 8am-8:30pm; Nov.-Mar. 8am-6pm. Free. Grandes Eaux Musicales Apr.-Sept. Sa-Su, and holidays €8, students and under 18 €6, under 6 free.

The most convenient place to rent bikes is across from the base of the canal. ☎01 39 66 97 66. Open Feb.-Nov. daily 10am-7pm. 30min. €4, 1hr. €6. There are 2 other bike rental locations: one to the north of the Parterre Nord by the Grille de la Reine, another by the Trianons at Porte St-Antoine. Rent a 4-person electric car next to entrance C2 on the terrace. ☎01 39 66 97 66. 1hr. €28; driver must be over 18. Rent boats for 4 at the boathouse to the right of the canal. ☎01 39 66 97 66. Open daily 10am-6:30pm. 30min. €10, 1hr. €14; refundable deposit €10. Horse-drawn carriages depart Tu-Su from right of the main terrace. ☎01 30 97 04 40.)

Trianons And Marie-Antoinette’S Hameau. Marie-Antoinette’s hameau provides interesting insight into how French royalty escaped social stresses. Marie-Antoinette’s solution was of course to build palaces, have trysts with lovers, and play at peasantry. We all know how that turned out.

On the right down the wooded path from the château, the Petit Trianon was built between 1762 and 1768 for Louis XV and his mistress Mme. de Pompadour. Marie-Antoinette took over the Petit Trianon in 1774, and it soon earned the nickname Little Vienna. Napoleon’s sister (Empress Marie-Louise) later inhabited The Petit Trianon. In 1867, the Empress Eugénie, one of Marie-Antoinette’s few admirers, turned the house into a museum devoted to the hapless queen.

Exit the Petit Trianon and follow the path to the left to arrive at the libidinous Temple of Love, a domed rotunda with 12 white marble columns and swans. Marie-Antoinette held many intimate nighttime parties in the small space, illuminated by torchlight. The queen was perhaps at her happiest and most ludicrous when spending time at the hameau , her own pseudo-peasant “hamlet” down the path from the Temple of Love. Inspired by Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s theories on the goodness of nature and the hameau at Chantilly the queen aspired to a so-called “simple” life. She commissioned Richard Mique to build a 12-building compound comprised of a dairy farm, gardener’s house, and mill, all surrounding a quaint artificial lake. Marie-Antoinette could play at a country life, imagining the starving Third Estate must not really suffer all that much. Any naïve illusions of rough living disappear upon entering the Queen’s Cottage at the hamlet’s center. Ornate furniture, marble fireplaces, and walk-in closets where Marie-Antoinette kept her monogrammed linens fill its rooms.

The single-story, stone-and-pink-marble Grand Trianon was intended as a château-away-from-château for Louis XIV. When life was getting him down—you know, his nobles were bickering or his mistresses were having bad hair days—the King got in a boat and rowed (well, was rowed) to this spot of refuge. Erected in 1687 and designed by Mansart, the palace consists of two wings joined by a large central porch. Lovely, simple formal gardens located behind the colonnaded porch are a relief from the rest of Versailles’s showy bosquets. Stripped of its furniture during the Revolution, the mini-château was later restored and inhabited by Napoleon and his second wife. In the last century, President Charles de Gaulle installed presidential apartments and rooms for visiting heads of state at the Grand Trianon while the Maastricht Treaty’s constitutional amendment was also written here. (Shuttle trams from the palace to the Trianons and the hameau leave from the North Terrace. www.train-versailles.com. 50min. ride, 1-4 trains per hr. Round-trip €6, age 11-18 and handicapped visitors €4.50, under 11 free. Audio guides for the garden ride €1.20. The walk takes 25min. Both Trianons open daily Apr.-Oct. noon-6:30pm; Nov.-Mar. noon-5:30pm. Last entry 30min. before closing. Trianons admission Apr.-Oct. €9, 2hr. before closing €5, under 18 free; Nov.-Mar. €5, under 18 free.)