58 Fun Facts About Palace of Versailles

Roughly how far from Paris does the Palace of Versailles stand?

About 16 km: near enough for a crowd from Paris to march out in a day in October 1789 and escort the royal family back to the capital the next afternoon.

Decades before Louis XIV's palace, which king built the original hunting lodge at Versailles?

Louis XIII hunted there so often that he probably wanted a base of his own, rather than riding back to Saint-Germain at night or sleeping at the area's only inn.

Which uprising of Louis XIV's childhood is often linked to his later move to Versailles?

The Fronde left the boy king feeling humiliated by the great nobles and unsafe in his own capital; in 1682 he settled court and government at Versailles for good.

The 1973 'Battle of Versailles' at the palace matched French and American stars in which field?

Fashion: the gala raised money to restore the palace, with five Paris couturiers and five American designers on one bill, and Liza Minnelli opened the American half singing 'Bonjour, Paris'.

Whose lavish 1661 fête at Vaux-le-Vicomte dazzled Louis XIV, weeks before the king had him arrested?

Nicolas Fouquet was already being undermined by his rival Colbert before the party; arrested that September, he spent the rest of his life in prison while the king put Vaux's architect, gardener and painter to work at Versailles.

Who designed the gardens of Versailles?

André Le Nôtre came from a family of royal gardeners and also reworked the Tuileries in Paris, pushing its central avenue west into the vista that became the Champs-Élysées.

Which painter directed the palace's interior decoration and painted the Hall of Mirrors ceiling?

Charles Le Brun, the king's First Painter, had the leading artists of the day work from his drawings, but after his patron Colbert died in 1683 the new minister favoured his rival Mignard.

Which architect built the Hall of Mirrors and the great north and south wings from 1678?

Jules Hardouin-Mansart was born plain Jules Hardouin; he learned the craft from his great-uncle, the architect François Mansart, and added the famous surname to his own.

What was the 'enveloppe' built between 1668 and 1671?

A new façade wrapped around the old château: Louis XIV wavered over demolishing the old brick building, then had Le Vau cover it in white stone on the garden side instead.

In 1783 the Montgolfier brothers launched a hot-air balloon at Versailles carrying which passengers?

A sheep, duck and rooster. The flight before Louis XVI was a test of whether living things could survive the upper air; they landed safely after eight minutes, and men flew two months later.

The Hall of Mirrors was built over what feature that once separated the king's and queen's apartments?

An open-air terrace. It looked onto the gardens between the two apartments, but it was awkward and exposed to bad weather, so within a few years it was enclosed to make the great gallery.

What happened to the Hall of Mirrors' famous solid silver furniture?

Melted down to pay for a war: in 1689 Louis XIV had his silver tables, candle stands and even his throne turned into coin to fund the War of the League of Augsburg.

The Hall of Mirrors' glass broke a European monopoly on mirror-making held by which city?

Venice. To break its hold, Colbert founded a royal mirror works in 1665, and by 1672 he could ban Venetian imports; the company survives today as Saint-Gobain.

The rooms of the king's State Apartment were each dedicated to what?

A planet and its Roman god: Le Vau planned seven such rooms, but the suite shrank when building the Hall of Mirrors swallowed some of them.

Which State Apartment room served as Louis XIV's throne room?

Apollo. The sun god was the Sun King's own emblem, so his room became the setting for formal audiences, with a silver throne some 2.6 metres tall on a dais.

What did Louis XIV use the Salon of Diana for?

Billiards. Louis XIV was a skilled player, and two tiers of seating were put up in the room so that courtiers could watch his games.

Which sculptor's marble bust of Louis XIV stands in the Salon of Diana?

Bernini was summoned from Rome in 1665 to redesign the Louvre; his plans were never built, but the bust of the young king that he carved during the stay survived.

Versailles' Ambassadors' Staircase was demolished in 1752, but which king later built a copy of it in his own palace?

Ludwig II of Bavaria. His island palace of Herrenchiemsee recreates the lost staircase from old plans and engravings, though he died with most of the palace unfinished.

Which two daily ceremonies in the royal bedroom were watched by crowds of courtiers?

The lever and the coucher were the king's rising and going to bed. Courtiers were let in by rank in successive waves, and watching him wash, shave and dress was a prized privilege.

From the balcony of which room did Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette face the crowd on 6 October 1789?

The king's bedchamber looks onto the Marble Courtyard, where the crowd had massed. Lafayette talked the king into showing himself, and by early afternoon the family was on the road to Paris.

What triggered the Women's March on Versailles in October 1789?

The high price and scarcity of bread sent thousands of Paris market women marching through the rain to the palace; a day later they went home with the royal family in tow.

Paris newspapers claimed officers at a royal banquet in October 1789 had trampled which revolutionary symbol?

The tricolour cockade. The banquet welcomed the Flanders Regiment to Versailles, and press reports of an orgy and an insult to the nation's colours helped turn Paris against the court.

From 1793, what did the revolutionary Convention do with the palace's furniture?

Sold it at auction: more than 17,000 lots went under the hammer, while the paintings were sent to the Louvre. The palace's curators have spent decades tracking the furniture down and buying it back.

Which ruler turned Versailles into a museum dedicated to 'all the glories of France' in the 1830s?

Louis Philippe I, the 'Citizen King', never lived at Versailles; he spent four years turning the idle royal residence into a history museum meant to reconcile the French, and opened it in 1837.

Which famous canvas hangs in the palace's Coronation Room?

David's painting of Napoleon crowning Josephine hung here until 1889, when it left for the Louvre; the canvas in the room now is the second version David finished in exile in Brussels.

What was proclaimed in the Hall of Mirrors on 18 January 1871?

The German Empire. With Paris under siege, Bismarck read out the proclamation in a hall that had been serving as a military hospital, facing the spot where Louis XIV's throne once stood.

The Treaty of Versailles was signed five years to the day after which event?

Franz Ferdinand's assassination at Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 had set off the war. The defeated side signed under an Allied ultimatum: accept the terms or the fighting would resume.

Which American philanthropist paid for major repairs to the palace in the 1920s?

John D. Rockefeller Jr. stepped in because the palace had come out of the First World War unmaintained and short of money. His two gifts paid for the repairs, and he helped restore Reims Cathedral and Fontainebleau too.

Since 1875, France's two houses of parliament have met in joint session at Versailles to do what?

Amend the Constitution. The custom dates from the 1870s, when parliament sat at Versailles because Paris was in revolt; until 1958 the joint sitting also elected the president.

Which Olympic sports were held on the palace grounds in 2024?

Equestrian and pentathlon. It was a farewell too: the pentathletes' show jumping at Versailles was the last at a Games before the sport swapped its riding leg for an obstacle course.

Which boats, a diplomatic gift that arrived in 1674, did Louis XIV sail at Versailles?

Gondolas. Their gondoliers came with them and were lodged in a cluster of buildings beside the Grand Canal that also housed the rest of the king's fleet.

What does the fountain at the head of the Grand Canal depict?

The sun god driving his chariot bursts from the water as if setting out on his daily flight. The gilded lead group took over a pond that had been a quiet swan lake under the previous king.

In the Latona Fountain, what were the Lycian peasants turned into for refusing the goddess a drink?

Frogs. In Ovid's telling the pond was theirs and they kept the thirsty mother and her two infants from it, so the punishment fitted: they were left to live in its water for good.

What are the 'Grandes Eaux' at Versailles?

Shows when all the fountains play. Water was always scarce on this site, so the displays now run on a closed loop, with pumps sending water from the Grand Canal back up to the reservoirs.

The Machine de Marly, built in 1684, pumped water to Versailles from which river?

The Seine. The machine hauled its water up a steep hillside, yet most of it ended up feeding the cascades of the king's new retreat at Marly, and the fountains of Versailles stayed rationed.

How does the Orangerie keep its thousand-odd boxed trees frost-free through winter?

Thick walls and south-facing windows. The walls are four to five metres thick and the glazing is doubled, so the hall stays above freezing with no heating; in summer the trees go out onto the parterre.

What were the 'porcelain' tiles on Louis XIV's Porcelain Trianon actually made of?

Glazed earthenware. Europe could not yet make true porcelain, so the pavilion wore blue-and-white Delft-style tiles in imitation of China; they cracked and leaked, and it was pulled down in 1687.

Which building on the Versailles estate did de Gaulle restore in 1963 to host foreign leaders, with a wing for the president?

The Grand Trianon. Its royal furniture was lost in the Revolution and Napoleon refurnished it for himself, which is why de Gaulle's guests found rooms that look as they did under the Empire.

Who were the first to use the Petit Trianon when it was finished in 1768?

Louis XV and Madame du Barry. The king had ordered the little palace for Madame de Pompadour, but she died four years before it was ready, so it was her successor who moved in.

What did Marie Antoinette have built around an artificial lake near the Petit Trianon from 1783?

A model farming village, designed by Richard Mique. It was a working farm, at the queen's insistence, and she used it for walks and small parties rather than, as legend has it, to play at farming.

Locked out of their hall in June 1789, the deputies of the Third Estate swore their famous oath in which Versailles building?

A royal tennis court. Finding the doors of their meeting hall shut and guarded on the king's orders, the deputies walked to the nearby court and swore not to part until France had a constitution.

The Royal Opera was inaugurated in 1770 for which occasion?

The wedding of the future Louis XVI to Marie Antoinette. Louis XV built the theatre with his grandsons' marriages in mind, and winches could raise its floor level with the stage to make one vast ballroom.

The Royal Opera's interior was built almost entirely from which material, painted to look like marble?

Wood. The timber interior proved an acoustic gift: the hall is said to resonate like a violin.

Which monarch was Napoleon III's guest of honour at an 1855 banquet in the Royal Opera?

Queen Victoria was returning Napoleon III's spring visit to London while their armies fought as allies in the Crimea, so he laid on a show of a kind Versailles had not seen since the kings.

Which composer played for the royal family at Versailles over the winter of 1763–64?

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was seven. On New Year's Day his family was admitted to the royal dinner, where he stood beside the queen, who spoke his language and interpreted for the king.

Which war ended with the treaties Britain signed with France and Spain at Versailles in September 1783?

The American Revolution. Louis XVI had received Benjamin Franklin at Versailles in 1778 and joined the fight; the Americans signed their own peace with Britain in a Paris hotel that same September.

Which scandal broke when Cardinal de Rohan was arrested in the Hall of Mirrors in August 1785?

The Diamond Necklace Affair. A swindler had tricked the cardinal into buying a fabulous necklace in Marie Antoinette's name; he was acquitted, and the queen, who knew nothing of it, never recovered her reputation.

The Royal Chapel at Versailles, completed in 1710, is dedicated to which saint?

Saint Louis, the crusader king Louis IX, was both the royal family's ancestor and Louis XIV's patron saint. The chapel was the last thing the old king built here, and its architect died before it was finished.

Which 1630 event, in which Richelieu regained the king's favour, took place at the Versailles hunting lodge?

The Day of the Dupes. The queen mother thought she had talked the king into sacking Richelieu, and her friends were already celebrating when he summoned the cardinal to Versailles that evening and kept him.

A 1978 bomb that wrecked galleries in the palace was planted by separatists from which French region?

Brittany. The Breton Liberation Front's bomb went off in the small hours on the ground floor, wrecking a gallery of Napoleonic art and blowing a hole in the ceiling; a night guard was hurt.

Which English palace did William III have Christopher Wren rebuild in the 1690s to rival Versailles?

Hampton Court Palace. Wren meant to pull down Henry VIII's Tudor palace piece by piece, but that plan was scrapped, leaving it part Tudor brick and part baroque answer to Louis XIV.

Which American president did de Gaulle entertain at a state dinner in the Hall of Mirrors in June 1961?

John F. Kennedy came with his wife Jacqueline. De Gaulle chose Versailles to show French heritage off to his guests, and after dinner he led them down a gallery of statues to the royal opera house.

The lost Labyrinth of Versailles held thirty-nine fountains whose painted lead animals acted out what?

Aesop's fables. The hedge maze was one of the wonders of Louis XIV's gardens, but it cost too much to keep up and was torn out when the park was replanted in the 1770s.

Which foreign ruler toured Versailles in 1717 and then enlarged his own palace to rival it?

Peter the Great was already building Peterhof when he came, and went home to enlarge it. His fountains there need no pumps: he fed them by gravity from springs on higher ground, where Versailles relied on costly machines.

Which monarch attended the 1957 reopening of the restored Royal Opera of Versailles?

Queen Elizabeth II was on her first state visit to France. She lunched in the Hall of Mirrors and then opened the theatre, which had been close to ruin after the war and was restored to its look of 1770.

Which singer filmed the video for 'Drop Dead' in and around the palace in 2026?

Olivia Rodrigo filmed there with director Petra Collins because the song's chorus name-checks the palace, picturing her crush as an angel painted on its walls.

When Louis XIV died at Versailles in 1715, the crown passed to which of his relatives?

His great-grandson, aged five, became Louis XV after the old king's 72 years on the throne. A week later the court left Versailles, and it stayed away for seven years.

Which president addressed parliament in congress at Versailles in 2009, the first to use a right created in 2008?

Nicolas Sarkozy. The 2008 reform made the Congress Chamber at Versailles the one place where a French president may address parliament, and François Hollande followed him there after the 2015 Paris attacks.