Palace of Versailles

The Palace of Versailles (French: Château de Versailles) is a château and historic monument in Versailles in the Yvelines department of France, southwest of Paris. It served as the principal residence of the French kings Louis XIV, Louis XV, and Louis XVI.

The king, the court, and the royal government lived there permanently from 6 May 1682 until 6 October 1789, except during the Regency years (1715–1723). Conceived by Louis XIV to glorify the French monarchy, the palace became the most important architectural project of his reign and is considered one of the masterpieces of French classical architecture. It exerted major influence across Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries in architecture and the decorative arts.

The palace forms a vast and complex ensemble of courtyards and buildings designed to maintain architectural harmony. It covers about 63,154 square metres and contains roughly 2,300 rooms, around 1,000 of which belong to the National Museum of the History of France housed in the Palace and the Trianons.

The park of the Palace of Versailles covers 815 hectares today, compared with more than 8,000 hectares before the French Revolution. Of this area, 93 hectares are formal gardens. The estate includes numerous features, such as the Petit Trianon and Grand Trianon—later used by Napoleon I, Louis XVIII, Charles X, Louis Philippe I, and Napoleon III—as well as the Hameau de la Reine, the Grand and Petit Canal, a former menagerie, the Orangerie, and the Pièce d'Eau des Suisses. As one of the most visited sites in Europe, the estate is central to ongoing discussions about managing overtourism.

Text adapted from “Palace of Versailles” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Palace of Versailles ranks #1 of 7,738 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #1 of the 469 mapped in France. Founded 1661, it is older than 26% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 580 atlas entries founded in the 17th century. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 201,480 times in the last 60 days, more than 100% of the atlas. Wikidata records about 8,130,000 visitors in 2018. 35 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. The nearest day-trip guide is Paris, 18 km away. See how France compares in the castle statistics.

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