Explore Versailles

First impressions of Versailles

Versailles is a day trip from Paris that genuinely earns the journey — even by the standards of Bourbon excess, Louis XIV's project here is jaw-dropping. The Château de Versailles started in 1623 as a hunting lodge for Louis XIII; his son turned it into the largest royal palace in Europe, with 2,300 rooms and a court of 10,000 people. The headline sequence is the State Apartments and the 73-metre Hall of Mirrors (galerie des Glaces) — 17 mirrored arches reflecting 17 windows looking out across the formal gardens, where the Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1919 — followed by the royal bedchambers, where you can still see the precise spot where Louis XIV's bed stood under its silk-canopied baldachin. The 800-hectare gardens by André Le Nôtre are arguably more impressive than the palace itself: geometric parterres, the Grand Canal (you can rent a rowing boat from April to October), the working Musical Fountains shows (April–October), and the Petit and Grand Trianon villas where the royals escaped court etiquette. Marie-Antoinette's playful Hameau de la Reine — a fake peasant village complete with cottages, dairy, and farm — is at the far western edge.