Palace of Versailles
A full-day curated tour of the world's most opulent royal estate — from the gilded State Apartments and legendary Hall of Mirrors to Marie-Antoinette's secret rural retreat. Located 20 km southwest of Paris, reachable by RER C train to Versailles-Château Rive Gauche.
Trip Stops
- 1
The stunning two-storey royal chapel completed in 1710, the last major building added to the palace under Louis XIV. The King attended Mass here every morning from the upper gallery, while the Court stood below. Fun fact: this chapel hosted the wedding of Marie-Antoinette and the future Louis XVI in 1770 — she was just 14 years old.
📍 Versailles, Île-de-France, France
- 2
A lavish suite of seven state rooms named after the planets and Roman gods — Venus, Diana, Mars, Mercury, Apollo and others — used by Louis XIV for his legendary evening entertainments. Each ceiling is painted with mythological scenes by Charles Le Brun. Fun fact: Louis XIV dined publicly in these rooms with courtiers watching him eat in reverent silence — attending the King's dinner was considered a great honour.
📍 Versailles, Île-de-France, France
- 3
The most famous room in the world's most famous palace — 73 metres long, with 357 mirrors facing 17 arched windows overlooking the gardens. Built between 1678 and 1684 to dazzle foreign ambassadors. Fun fact: the 357 mirrors were a deliberate provocation — France's mirror-making rivalled Venice's closely-guarded monopoly, and displaying them here was a political statement of French industrial supremacy. The Treaty of Versailles ending WWI was also signed here in 1919.
📍 Versailles, Île-de-France, France
- 4
The symbolic heart of the palace, positioned at the exact centre of the building — aligned with the rising sun. Every morning and evening the King's waking and sleeping were performed as public ceremonies (the 'lever' and 'coucher') before an audience of hundreds. Fun fact: on 6 October 1789, Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette appeared on this very balcony before a revolutionary mob from Paris — it was their last night at Versailles.
📍 Versailles, Île-de-France, France
- 5
The official rooms of the Queen of France, home to three successive queens — Maria Theresa, Marie Leszczyńska and Marie-Antoinette. The Queen's Bedchamber is where royal births took place publicly, with crowds admitted to watch to prove the legitimacy of the heir. Fun fact: Marie-Antoinette gave birth to her four children here in front of assembled courtiers — on one occasion the room became so crowded that she fainted from the heat.
📍 Versailles, Île-de-France, France
- 6
One of the greatest achievements of 17th-century landscape design — 800 hectares of geometric parterres, fountains, canals, tree-lined allées and sculptural groves designed by André Le Nôtre for Louis XIV. On Musical Fountain Show days (Apr–Oct), over 50 fountains come to life to music. Fun fact: the gardens contain 1,400 fountains and water features fed by an engineering system so vast that when all fountains run simultaneously, it can drain the reservoirs within a few hours — even Louis XIV's engineers couldn't run them all at once.
📍 Versailles, Île-de-France, France
- 7
A single-storey pink marble château built by Louis XIV in 1687 as a private escape from royal court protocol. Napoleon later lived here with his second wife Marie-Louise, and Charles de Gaulle used it to receive foreign heads of state. Fun fact: the original structure on this site was covered entirely in blue-and-white Delft-style porcelain tiles — but the smell from the flowers planted around it was so overwhelming that Louis XIV had it demolished and replaced with the current marble building.
📍 Versailles, Île-de-France, France
- 8
An elegant neoclassical palace completed in 1768 by architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel for Louis XV, and gifted by Louis XVI to Marie-Antoinette in 1774. It became her private sanctuary where only she decided who could enter — not even the King could visit without her invitation. Fun fact: Marie-Antoinette's boudoir features mirrored panels that, by turning a crank, could be raised to completely block the windows — a rare 18th-century privacy invention.
📍 Versailles, Île-de-France, France
- 9
A charming fake village of 12 thatched-roof cottages built between 1783–1786 for Marie-Antoinette, complete with a working farm, mill, pond, dovecote and dairy. Real peasant farmers lived here and produced eggs and milk for the royal kitchen. Fun fact: Marie-Antoinette and her ladies-in-waiting would dress in peasant costumes and roleplay as shepherdesses here — a wildly controversial pastime that fuelled public anger toward the 'frivolous' queen in the years before the Revolution.
📍 Versailles, Île-de-France, France
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