Versailles the magnificent (Versailles Palace)

Member Name: Alan Rice

Product:	Versailles Palace
Date:	09/05/01 (631 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Amazing

Disadvantages: Too many tourists

No trip to France, and certainly no sojourn in the Ile-de-France, the region surrounding and encompassing Paris, could ever claim to be anywhere near complete if it did not include a visit to the Royal town of Versailles.

Versailles is of course home to the world's (rightly) most famous palace, but not only that: it contains many fine town houses, churches, a Cathedral, and is a town well worth spending time in.

Before the seventeenth century Versailles was just the location of a Royal hunting lodge, built by Louis XIII, the remnants of which are incorporated into the central structure of the palace as we know it now. The rest was just a vast, vast forest, and nothing more than a small village. Following political unrest in Paris in his youth, Louis XIV decided to move the Royal court from the Louvre, to Versailles. Versailles had two principal attracts; although not in Paris it is not too distant- half a day's coach ride at the time; and furthermore, the buildings that did exist there had been built by Louis XIV father. SO it was that a small hunting lodge was slowly transformed into a treasure house of baroque art and architecture and a small village became the lovely town that we know today.

The palace was largely built under Louis XIV, by the architect Mansart. However subsequent kings have also left their mark on the palace. Louis XV built the Opera House (for the wedding of Louis XVI), and the charming set of rooms known as the petit apartements, which form a delightful contrast to the grand and stately rooms of Louis XIV. The gardens, laid out in the formal French style and littered with fountains and statues are worth a visit in their own right. One general recommendation: go early in the morning, and as far out of the tourist season as possible. If you do the latter, you will have the opportunity to hear concerts in the magnificent acoustic of the chapel, which is one the gems of the restrained, 'style classique'.


The town itself has been marked by the presence, for one hundred and twenty years, of the court. Thus many of the more beautiful town houses and churches are contempories of the palace. Of particular note are the restrained and slightly austere elegance of the Cathedral, built during the reign of Louis XV, and the Musee Lambinet, which is housed in a rich merchant's town house and which affords a sneek into the furniture and lifestyle of a rich denizen of Versailles in the eighteenth century.

The town is very bourgeois, and so there are many charming shops, anitque shops in particular, to charm when (and this should be a matter of years!) the architectural wonders of the town have ceased to do so.

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