Château de Versailles is the Royal residence of King Louis the 14th and is one of the most popular and well known monuments in France.
Here we see King Louis the 14th in all of his glory. You can't not be impressed by a man with that much confidence to show off that much leg.
The residence is located in the city of Versailles, a somewhat posh suburban community about 20km from Paris. The original structure of the Chateau dates back to 1623 when king Louis the 13th built a hunting lodge on the property. The lodge was later expanded into a Chateau and was further expanded into a palace through several additions in 1661 to 1715 by Louis the 14th.
On average the site receives around 15 million visitors per year and line ups to get in tend to be extremely long. It's not uncommon for visitors to have to wait for 2 hours or more to enter the grounds which in my mind, isn't even worth it, if I am to be honest.
This will probably sound very pretentious but I personally wouldn't consider Versailles to among my top 5 favorite castles in France.
The grounds are massive and some of the rooms are ornate, but its very expensive compared to other castles in the country that offer a very similar or even better experience overall.
It's also very crowded inside and relatively ordinary in comparison to some others.
You can see similar architecture and gardens at other residences without the hassle and there are plenty of more unique castles else where.
It's basically the same as many others, only much much bigger.
Still, I suppose visiting Versailles is one of those quintessential things you do in France, so we took advantage of the reduced numbers during covid and went to see the place.
It is estimated that visitations to the palace have been reduced by 75% in the past 2 years, which is probably pretty accurate because we bought our tickets online and walked right in without having to wait in line.
In 1789, during the French Revolution the royal family returned to Paris and all but abandoned the castle.
In 1810-1814 Napoleon Bonaparte used it as a summer residence but didn't bother to restore it.
It wasn't repaired or reestablished until 1830 when the Museum of French History was installed within one of the Southern wings.
In 1979 the palace and grounds were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site and became a protected monument.
As one would imagine, the rooms within are ornately decorated with golden paint, art work, murals and tapestries on the walls, and frescos on the ceiling.
The chapel was one of the most interesting rooms to see but it was also one of the busiest. You couldn't enter it and had to view it from outside the doors, which meant that a large group of people were clustered in one small space to see it and take photos. Everyone, including me, had the same idea of sticking their arms in the air and snapping off a quick photo and then getting the hell out of there.
The Hall of mirrors is probably the most famous room in the residence and another of the busiest as well.
You have to follow the que through a roped off path that takes you into the room briefly and then around the outside.
This is for the best though because it keeps a large portion of the hall open so that you can actually see it without too many people in the way.
We stopped to take a selfie - just one of those things that you do in such a place.
Apparently the hall used to be a terrace that was connected to the outer gardens. It was later converted to the hall because the weather on that side of the building was terrible so it was rarely used for its intended purpose.
Again, there is a lot of artwork and a lot of portraits throughout the Chateau. I like this one of General Lafayette (above). I only know of him because of the Hamilton musical.
The fresco above was quite impressive, but I find the next two paintings to be hilarious.
A random bedroom. Not too extravagant but comfy looking nonetheless.
Now let's see what the gardens have to offer.
Here is my beautiful wife in front of the orange groves. I think she looked very Parisian in her grandmother's scarf.
We had to pay an extra 11€ to see the garden so in total it was 37€ per person to visit Château de Versailles - not inexpensive.
The grounds are massive and the gardens are fairly extravagant in some areas...
but one thing that annoyed me was that we had to pay that extra fee that day because it was a Saturday, which is their musical fountain day.
Classical music was playing on the speakers throughout the gardens but only 2 or 3 fountains out of 20 or more were actually shooting water.
Apparently the main fountains don't shoot water until after 4pm or something but they don't tell you that at the gate or on the website, so we paid extra to see something that wasn't really available.
It was around noon and we weren't going to try and kill 3-4 hours there so unfortunately we didn't see any of the more elaborate fountain displays.
The grounds were still nice to wander through and explore though.
There were a lot of statues, sculptures and art pieces to see so it stayed interesting for quite a while.
With so much to explore on the grounds, you can really spend a lot of time in there.
There were a lot of tailored trees and shrubs planted in rows as well. I do like a well organized garden, I must say.
