Versailles estate comprises the Château de Versailles, the Garden, the Park, the Château du Grand Trianon, the Château du Petit Trianon, the Hameau - and the now-defunct Menagerie Royale.
Given the vast amount of information available on Versailles, we've created a special article just for the château (Click on The Château de Versailles through France's chaotic history).
This article is limited to everything in the Versailles estate that can be seen around the château, the park, the water features, the châteaux in the park and Marie-Antoinette's hamlet. Visitors often focus solely on the “central” château, whereas the Versailles estate includes other gems that would be a shame to ignore. To help visitors find their way around and see everything the Versailles estate has to offer, we've written a special and practical article entitled “Versailles Tour: organizing your visit to the château and estate”.
The Versailles estate
The Versailles estate is located 20 km as the crow flies to the west, slightly south of the center of Paris, 25 km by road from Notre Dame. If today it takes less than an hour to get to Versailles from Paris, Louis XIV had to plan at least a morning's carriage ride. This is probably one of the reasons why he and his court gradually moved to Versailles full-time.
First and foremost, the Château de Versailles, which covers 63,154 m2, divided into 2,300 rooms, 1,000 of which are assigned to the Musée National des Châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon.
At the foot of the château, the 83-hectare garden includes the parterres d'Eau, du Nord and du Midi, under which the orangery is housed. Along the axis of the grand perspective that runs from the Parterre d'Eau, you can see the Parterre de Latone and the Tapis Vert, which open onto the Grand Canal and the Parc.
The main bosquets are the bosquet des Bains d'Apollon, the bosquet de la Colonnade, the bosquet des Dômes and the bosquet des Rocailles. The Park alone covers 720 ha compared with 8,000 ha before the French Revolution.
From April to October, the gardens host the musical and nocturnal “eaux grandes” organized by Château de Versailles Spectacles.
In the axis of the château, on the opposite side of the entrance to Versailles from the town, are the Garden and Park, facing west/northwest.
The nearly 720-hectare park includes 6 subsidiary structures that still exist today
- La pièce d'eau des Suisses,
- The Grand Canal,
- Château du Grand Trianon, also known as the Marble Trianon (originally the Porcelain Trianon)
- Château du Petit Trianon
- The Queen's Hamlet (Marie-Antoinette)
- Pavillon de la Lanterne (now a presidential summer residence)
- The Menagerie (destroyed during the Revolution)
Distances in the Versailles estate between buildings are relatively long (1 km from the main château to the Grand Trianon, 400 m between the two Trianons). You can move around the park from one building to the next, either on foot, by bicycle, by car (beware of many restrictions), or by Petit Train (return tickets only from the Grand Canal or the Trianons to the main château, with unlimited ascent and descent, or round-trip tickets from the main château).
La pièce d'eau des Suisses
The "pièce d'eau des Suisses" is a pond in the grounds of the Château de Versailles. Built between 1679 and 1682, it owes its name to the fact that it was dug (completed) by a regiment of Swiss Guards. It was created to drain the King's kitchen garden.
The water feature has a rectangular shape, 487 meters long and 234 meters wide, extended by 2 semicircular shapes 196 meters in diameter, centered on the axis of the water feature. The circumference is therefore 1,665 meters long and the surface area 14.4 hectares. With an average depth of 1.70 metres, the estimated volume is 250,000 m3, equivalent to 100 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
This water feature was dug out of a marshy area, as an extension of the Orangerie, which dominates it and from which it creates a perspective. Work began in 1665, in several stages. Initially octagonal in shape, it was enlarged around 1678 by the Swiss Guards in the service of King Louis XIV. A final extension in 1682 added rounded ends.
Under the Ancien Régime, the lake was often the scene of nautical festivities. Nowadays, it is open to all and has become a popular Sunday picnic spot. It's also the scene of the Versailles Triathlon Festival, held every year in May. It is organized by the Versailles Triathlon Club on a voluntary basis.
The “pièce d'eau des Suisses” is located outside the current perimeter of the château, from which it is separated by a road (the route de Saint-Cyr).
The Grand Canal a central piece of the Versailles estate
The "Grand Canal de Versailles" is the largest pool in the park of the Château de Versailles. Cross-shaped, it was built between 1667 and 1679, at the instigation of Le Nôtre. Prior to this date, the park was closed by a gate and ended behind the "Bassin des Cygnes".
Louis XIV sailed a large fleet: a three-master (“Le Grand Vaisseau”), a galley, longboats, galiotes, brigantines, gondolas (donated by the Doge of Venice) and, from 1675, two yachts from England.
From 1684, a permanent crew comprising: a lieutenant, a master, a foreman, eleven sailors, six gondoliers (including two from Toulon and four from Venice), eight carpenters (including two Italians), two caulkers and a pit sawyer, all under the command of Captain Consolin. They were housed in purpose-built buildings known as “Little Venice” at the eastern end of the Grand Canal, in the immediate vicinity of the Bassin d'Apollon.
In 1685, 260 men from Flanders were assigned to three companies for the frigates.
The Grand Canal served as the starting point for fireworks displays during the sumptuous royal festivities that Louis XIV organized at Versailles.
In winter, when frost made navigation impossible, the Grand Canal was transformed into a skating rink for skaters and sleighs.
Today, the layout of the Grand Canal takes the form of a cross, with the main east-west perspective, measuring 1.670 km, located in the axis of the château. The perpendicular branch (which was dug first), running north-south and 1 km long, is made up of two arms: the northern branch, running towards Trianon, is 400 m long, while the southern branch, running towards the Royal Menagerie (no longer in existence), is 600 m long.
During the French Revolution, the canal was filled in and used as a wheat field. Louis XVIII had it restored to its original purpose.
The Grand Trianon in the north of the Versailles estate
The "Grand Trianon", formerly known as the "Marble Trianon" (Trianon de marbre), is a château on the Versailles estate.
It was built at the request of King Louis XIV, from 1687, by the architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart near the Château de Versailles, at the end of the eastern arm of the Grand Canal.
The building's pink marble exterior earned it the name “Marble Trianon”, in contrast to the porcelain Trianon that preceded it on the same site, the latter being built on the former village of Trianon.
At the end of the First World War, after the Treaties of Versailles and Saint-Germain signed in 1919 with Germany and Austria respectively, and before the Treaty of Sèvres signed in August 1920 with Turkey, the Treaty of Trianon was signed on June 4, 1920 with Hungary, for whom the name “Trianon” had become synonymous with national tragedy.
By 1959, General de Gaulle was thinking of turning the Grand Trianon into a presidential residence. However, the costs involved were considerable: the 1961 estimate put the cost of restoring the building and furnishings at 20 million French francs.
However, the President pursued the idea of restoring Trianon to its former glory, so that it could welcome prestigious guests. A program law for restoration was passed on July 31, 1962. From 1963, the building was restored by Marc Saltet. It was refurnished by Gérald Van der Kemp (including the installation of air conditioning, electricity and modern kitchens).
Over the course of time, the Grand Trianon has been the residence of many French and foreign royalty, including Louis XIV, Peter I of Russia and Marie Leszczynska, wife of Louis XV.
More recent visitors have included General de Gaulle, and foreign heads of state on official visits to France, such as US President Richard Nixon in 1969, the American presidential couple John and Jackie Kennedy, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip in 1972, and Russian President Boris Yeltsin in 1992. It was also the setting for President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's fiftieth birthday party in 1976, as well as the Republic's official receptions, including the 1982 G7 summit.
Now open to the public as part of the Musée National des Châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon, it is still used as a reception venue by the French government, which welcomes its distinguished guests.
The Grand Trianon as a place to stay for distinguished guests
1690-1703: Louis XIV
1703-1711: Monseigneur le Dauphin, son of Louis XIV
1717: Peter I the Great, Emperor of Russia
1740: Marie Leszczynska, wife of Louis XV
1810-1814: Marie-Louise of Austria, wife of Napoleon I
1830-1848: Queen Marie-Amélie de Bourbon-Siciles, wife of Louis-Philippe I
Since 1963, the Grand Trianon has served as an occasional meeting place for the President of the Republic and foreign heads of state on official visits:
- Charles de Gaulle held talks with Richard Nixon (USA) in March 1969.
- Georges Pompidou welcomed Queen Elizabeth II (United Kingdom) in May 1972.
- Valéry Giscard d'Estaing successively welcomed the Shah of Iran, Jimmy Carter (USA) and Hussein of Jordan.
- In 1992, François Mitterrand welcomed the first president of the fledgling Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin.
- On March 27, 2014, François Hollande welcomed Chinese President XI Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan for a private dinner served by chef Alain Ducasse.
- Emmanuel Macron welcomed Russian President Vladimir Putin to the Petit Trianon in 2017.
Le Petit Trianon for Madame de Pompadour
Le "Petit Trianon" is one of the estates in the grounds of the "Domaine du Château de Versailles" - created between 1762 and 1768, it comprises a château surrounded by gardens of varying styles.
At first, there was just one garden. In 1750, at the instigation of Madame de Pompadour, Louis XV commissioned Claude Richard, assisted ten years later by Bernard de Jussieu, to create a “plant garden” in the meadows and groves to the east of the Grand Trianon. This indicates the King's passionate interest in botanical experiments, inspired by the doctrine of Dr. Quesnay. He installed a small kitchen garden with greenhouses, enabling him to cultivate hitherto unknown species and experiment with new methods of cultivation. The architect Gabriel embellished the French garden with a menagerie for ordinary (farmyard) animals, in contrast to Louis XIV's nearby, more exotic Royal Menagerie. He also built two pleasure and relaxation factories, the French Pavilion and the Salon Frais, in the middle of the green alleys. The ensemble also includes a stable, a sheepfold and a dairy. He also restored Louis XIV's two ice houses and built a house for gardener Richard.
For almost ten years, the fruit and vegetable garden was constantly evolving, according to the King's interests. Little-known foreign plants such as pineapples, coffee, apricots, cherries, plums and peaches were introduced. A fig factory was set up near the Fresh Pavilion and, to preserve the charm of the walks, the edges of the avenues were lined with small orange trees in iron pots. The King enjoyed strolling through the garden and tasting or offering the fruits; strawberries, of which Antoine Nicolas Duchesne cultivated all the varieties in Europe to enable multiple grafting, became one of Louis XV's prides.
In addition to being a seemingly futile pastime and fantasy for the King, Louis XV's garden became the largest botanical collection in Europe. A jewel in every court and praised by all scientific circles, it was a veritable laboratory for experimentation.
As early as 1758, Louis XV was planning to build a small château near the new gardens. In 1762, the King asked his First Architect to build a new kind of château, one that would overlook the gardens. This simple, uncluttered neo-classical building, with its square floor plan and four facades decorated in the Corinthian order, combines the talents of Gabriel, the sculptor Guibert and decorators who bring to the interior the latest taste, more refined than rich, in which a privileged place is reserved for nature and the country atmosphere.
But Madame de Pompadour, for whom the château was intended, died on April 15, 1764, unable to see the work through to completion. It was therefore with his new favorite, Madame Du Barry, that Louis XV inaugurated the Petit Trianon in 1768. It wasn't until September 9, 1770, however, that he had his first lie-in in the new building. From then on, the Grand Trianon was largely abandoned in favor of the new “Petit Trianon” château, on which all eyes were focused.
Marie-Antoinette's Petit Trianon : a gift from Louis XVI
On the death of Louis XV on May 10, 1774, the favorite Countess Du Barry (born in 1743 and who died 19 years later on the scaffold on December 8, 1793) had to leave the estate.
Louis XVI offered the Petit Trianon to his young wife Marie-Antoinette, saying “You love flowers, Madame, I have a bouquet for you. It's the Petit Trianon”. But other witnesses report the scene differently: “Madame, these beautiful places have always been the home of kings' favorites, so they must be yours”. On June 6, 1774, Marie-Antoinette hung the house-warming railing of her new possession, and shortly afterwards, her royal husband presented her with the key to the estate, set with 531 diamonds and executed by locksmith François Brochois and goldsmith-jeweler Michel Maillard.
Here, Maris-Antoinette created a personal and intimate world, far removed from the pomp of the court. She had a society theater built. For five years, the Queen performed on stage herself, as part of a small troupe of her intimates, or attended performances by actors from the French and Italian Comedies.
Later, she sacrificed botany and had an English-style garden laid out, in contrast to the monotony of the rest of the park. Between 1777 and 1782, Richard Mique erected several fabriques along the contours of winding paths and a river: a temple dedicated to Love, an “alpine garden” with its belvedere and a set of rings. In a more rustic style, an ornamental hamlet completes the ensemble, following the Rousseauist inspiration of painter Hubert Robert (see below).
Her personal mark is visible everywhere, but she builds for her immediate pleasure, not for eternity. It's also the place where famous parties are held: consequently, it's these that galvanize popular opinion, and the excess of these entertainments leads to an exaggeration of their unpopularity. People don't hesitate to evoke the destruction of an entire forest for a few burnt bundles, to suppose the harboring of illicit love affairs, or even to accuse the Queen of having stolen a portion of land from France. In reality, however, they were less frequent than rumors would have us believe, due to the high cost, which the financing of the American war no longer allowed.
Yet it was this real gap between the hardships of the people and Marie-Antoinette's carefree, lavish lifestyle on her Petit Trianon estate that fueled rumor, outrageous invention and absurd slander, which in turn helped shape the opinion of the Revolution.
The Petit Trianon and the Revolution
Trianon is the part of the Versailles estate that suffers most from the French Revolution: the Château du Petit Trianon is emptied of its furnishings before being converted into an inn, the gardens are transformed into a public ballroom, and the park's factories are looted or abandoned.
On October 5, 1789, Marie-Antoinette was in the gardens of the Petit Trianon, near the grotto, when a page came to warn her of the imminent arrival of an armed mob at the gates of the Château de Versailles. As soon as the royal family left, Trianon was virtually abandoned, in the hands of the staff who continued to live there. Work was halted, leaving the contractors with half a million pounds in unpaid bills.
After the final fall of the monarchy in 1792, most of the furniture and objects at the Petit Trianon were combined with those at the Château de Versailles, and auctioned off by decree of the Convention on June 10, 1793. The auction began on Sunday August 25, 1793, and continued for almost a year, until August 11, 1794.
The Trianon itself was declared national property as well as the Versailles estate, and the land was divided into ten lots. The city of Versailles proposed that the Petit Trianon be used as a botanical garden, but André Thouin, gardener at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, decided to establish it in the Versailles kitchen garden. In the end, Antoine Richard persuaded the administration not to sell the national property in the Paris area, but to allow it to remain in the hands of the nascent Republic. He obtained the support of Charles-François Delacroix, the people's representative sent to Versailles, and his successor, André Dumont, a member of the Convention, and the sale was cancelled by decree on 4 Pluviôse An III.
Until then, the Petit Trianon had provided no revenue for the administration, and in 1796 was leased to a cabaret owner and innkeeper by the name of Charles Langlois, succeeded in 1801 by citoyen Mettereau. The popular balls and parties held there degraded the residence, and the gardens fell into disrepair due to lack of maintenance. Two small houses in the nearby hamlet, as well as the Pavillon frais, threatened to collapse, but it was above all nature and the inclemency of the seasons that took their toll. Despite the many political about-faces of the central government, the gardens were organized to some extent, but for educational purposes, with the establishment of a central school.
The Petit Trianon under Napoleon 1st
In 1805, the Petit Trianon regained its status as a palace, and was assigned by Emperor Napoleon to his sister Pauline, Princess Borghese. Renovation work quickly got underway.
In 1810, the estate reverted to Napoleon's 2nd wife, Empress Marie-Louise, who had the former residence of her great-aunt restored, despite the painful past. The high point of imperial life at Trianon was the “Fête de l'Impératrice”, held on August 25, 1811, the feast of St. Louis, and the occasion for grand illuminations in the gardens, enchanting country scenes set to music, and a variety of shows that delighted the court and the imperial couple.
The Petit Trianon under the Restoration (1814-1830), the July Monarchy (1830-1748) and the Empire (1851-1870)
During the Restoration, the Duchesse d'Angoulême, living daughter of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, inherited the Petit Trianon, but because of the painful memories associated with it, she only took a stroll there, and was content to attend the Duc de Berry's wedding dinner with Marie-Caroline in 1816.
Louis Philippe moved to the Grand Trianon to oversee the transformation of the Château de Versailles into a “museum dedicated to all the glories of France”. A few weeks after their wedding, he gave his son Ferdinand and daughter-in-law the Duchesse d'Orléans an apartment in the attic of the Petit Trianon. After spending many happy days there with her husband, she returned to mourn him and devote herself to raising her children, following his accidental death on July 13, 1842.
The gardens, extending as far as the hamlet, were also rebuilt or re-established as they had been in Marie-Antoinette's day. The Châteaux of Versailles and Trianon were converted into museums, but lost their status as official residences.
In 1867, Empress Eugénie ordered that the furniture and objects from the State collections that had belonged to Marie-Antoinette be moved back to the Petit Trianon. They had been dispersed during the Revolution, when over 17,000 lots from the entire Versailles estate were sold. However, it wasn't until the 20th century and the work of Pierre Verlet, historian of royal furniture, that a precise and scientific identification of the furniture was applied according to the inventories in the archives of the King's household. Little by little, pieces of the original furniture returned to the château, reminding visitors of the Trianon taste expressed by Riesener, Jacob and Foliot.
Recent events at the Petit Trianon in the Versailles estate
The storm of December 26, 1999 had a particularly severe impact on the gardens of Trianon and on the Versailles estate, with gusts of wind of rare violence destroying a large part of the plantations, including the famous Virginia tulip tree that had been planted when the garden was created in 1783. A restoration program was launched at the beginning of 2002, with the aim of reconstituting a composition consistent with Queen Marie-Antoinette's original design.
In the early 2000s, the restorers' aim was “to give the impression that time had stood still on October 5, 1789”, the date of the royal family's definitive departure from Versailles, and not to turn the place into a museum. The movement of public opinion around Marie-Antoinette, reinforced by the release of Sofia Coppola's film, encouraged this large-scale project, led by Pierre-André Lablaude, chief architect of historic monuments.
In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic in France, the gardens of the Petit Trianon were no longer maintained, but returned to the way they had looked 300 years earlier in Marie-Antoinette's time. The decision was taken to leave them in their natural state and no longer mow them.
The Hameau de la Reine in Marie-Antoinette's time
To satisfy her taste for the rustic, Marie-Antoinette wanted to build a small hamlet, as the Prince de Condé had done in Chantilly in 1775. There was plenty of space as the Versailles estate had 8000 ha at that time.
This hamlet was commissioned during the winter of 1782-1783 by Queen Marie-Antoinette, who wished to distance herself from the constraints of the Versailles court, longing for a more rustic life in a natural setting inspired by the writings of Rousseau, a little paradise where theater and festivities would make her forget her condition as queen.
In 1783, Richard Mique drew up plans for an idyllic village.
Around an artificial pond, he had twelve thatched cottages built, complete with vegetable gardens, orchards, a farm to produce milk and eggs for the queen, small walled gardens, a lighthouse and a mill. The most important of these houses is the Queen's House in the center of the hamlet. The composition of the hamlet was studied as a theatrical set representing a French village, overlooked by a salon-belvedere. Although the latter was never built, its spirit was preserved.
But this rural setting was also a farm, reflecting the influence of the ideas of the physiocrats and philosophers of the Enlightenment on the aristocracy of the time.
The main works were completed in 1786. The facades were painted in imitation of old brick, crumbling stone and worm-eaten wood, with cracks and falling plaster. They were decorated with Virginia creeper and earthenware pots filled with a variety of flowers. The flowerbeds were planted with savoy cabbage and a variety of vegetables, including strawberry, raspberry, plum, pear, cherry, peach, apricot and walnut trees. Over a thousand vegetables were planted in the gardens.
The lake was also stocked with twenty-seven pike and two thousand carp. In the spring of 1787, it was the Queen's wish that every house should be decorated with flowers. Over the winter, they were cultivated in greenhouses specially erected for the occasion. And by late summer, bunches of grapes were hanging from the pergolas.
Together with the theater and the landscaped gardens, the hamlet represents the main contribution to the embellishment of Versailles during the reign of Louis XVI.
The hamlet project, which was the sovereign's dream of a perfect garden, was sometimes criticized to the point of slander. On the contrary, it was designed to avoid any extravagance. The education of the royal children was also one of the aims of this project. “I don't hold court there, I live there in private”, said the Queen.
On the afternoon of October 5, 1789, the Queen was in the grotto. She was summoned by a messenger from the king to return to the château. She took one last look at the hamlet she would never see again.
The hamlet after Marie-Antoinette
Like the nearby Petit Trianon, the hamlet was leased in 1796 to a cabaret owner and innkeeper by the name of Charles Langlois.
Abandoned after the French Revolution, the Queen's hamlet underwent three major restoration campaigns: one led by Napoleon I between 1810 and 1812 represents the bulk of the current base. The second was carried out thanks to the patronage of John Rockefeller Jr. in the 1930s. Finally, the hamlet was renovated in the 1990s, under the impetus of Pierre-André Lablaude, chief architect of historic monuments, and was opened to the public in 2006 as part of an area named Domaine de Marie-Antoinette.
The hamlet was classified as a historic monument in the 1862 list of historic monuments, supplemented by the decree of October 31, 1906, which included the entire Versailles estate.
The storm that swept across France at the end of 1999 left numerous craters all over the hamlet, the result of fifty-three trees being torn down. In the almost total deforestation of the estate, a Virginia tulip tree, nicknamed “Marie-Louise”, rooted in the early 19th century, was swept away. In the end, what appeared to be a catastrophe for the Queen's hamlet, turned out to be an impetus to reconstitute the site as it was at the end of the 18th century, rid of outdated, boring and even anarchic vegetation, while preserving the heritage of Louis XV's botanical garden and the original layout.
The Royal Menagerie of the Versailles estate
The Royal Menagerie of Versailles was Louis XIV's first major project at Versailles. It was built even before the creation of the Grand Canal. Its construction was entrusted to architect Louis Le Vau, who began work in 1663.
Conceived as a place of pageantry, the menagerie at Versailles is a place of splendor and wonder, where you can discover exotic and wild animals from all over the world. It's a popular destination for strolls, and an obligatory stopover for Louis XIV's grand parties and receptions. It was here that the whole of Enlightenment Europe came to see, among other things, hummingbirds, parrots, ostriches, an elephant and a dromedary.
Abandoned during the French Revolution, it fell into ruin and was destroyed in 1902.
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