Palace of Versailles Trivia
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58 free Palace of Versailles trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Versailles started as a hunting lodge that courtiers called a house of cards and ended up as the seat of an absolute monarchy, a revolutionary flashpoint, a German coronation hall and the room where the First World War was ended on paper. This quiz covers all of it: Fouquet's fatal party, Le Vau's enveloppe, Le Nôtre's axes, Le Brun's ceilings, the 578 mirrors, the silver furniture melted for war, the planets of the State Apartments, the lever and the coucher, and the balcony scene of 6 October 1789. Out in the park there are questions on the Grand Canal and its Venetian gondolas, the Apollo and Latona fountains, the fourteen waterwheels of the Machine de Marly, the Orangerie, the Porcelain Trianon, Marie Antoinette's hamlet and the wooden opera house built for her wedding. The later history covers Louis Philippe's museum, Rockefeller's cheque, the 1999 storm, the 2024 Olympics and why the French Parliament still meets there. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the palace, the Hall of Mirrors, the gardens and the individual buildings and events, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question. For the man who built it, try our Louis XIV quiz.
30 of 58 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Roughly how far from Paris does the Palace of Versailles stand?
About 16 km
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.
Q 02Decades before Louis XIV's palace, which king built the original hunting lodge at Versailles?
Louis XIII
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.
Q 03Which uprising of Louis XIV's childhood is often linked to his later move to Versailles?
The Fronde
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.
Q 04The 1973 'Battle of Versailles' at the palace matched French and American stars in which field?
Fashion
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'.
Q 05Whose lavish 1661 fête at Vaux-le-Vicomte dazzled Louis XIV, weeks before the king had him arrested?
Nicolas Fouquet
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.
Q 06Who designed the gardens of Versailles?
André Le Nôtre
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.
Q 07Which painter directed the palace's interior decoration and painted the Hall of Mirrors ceiling?
Charles Le Brun
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.
Q 08Which architect built the Hall of Mirrors and the great north and south wings from 1678?
Jules Hardouin-Mansart
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.
Q 09What was the 'enveloppe' built between 1668 and 1671?
A new façade wrapped around the old château
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.
Q 10In 1783 the Montgolfier brothers launched a hot-air balloon at Versailles carrying which passengers?
A sheep, duck and rooster
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.
Q 11The Hall of Mirrors was built over what feature that once separated the king's and queen's apartments?
An open-air terrace
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.
Q 12What happened to the Hall of Mirrors' famous solid silver furniture?
Melted down to pay for a war
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.
Q 13The Hall of Mirrors' glass broke a European monopoly on mirror-making held by which city?
Venice
Q 21What triggered the Women's March on Versailles in October 1789?
The high price and scarcity of bread
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.
Q 22Paris newspapers claimed officers at a royal banquet in October 1789 had trampled which revolutionary symbol?
The tricolour cockade
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.
Q 23From 1793, what did the revolutionary Convention do with the palace's furniture?
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.
Q 14The rooms of the king's State Apartment were each dedicated to what?
A planet and its Roman god
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.
Q 15Which State Apartment room served as Louis XIV's throne room?
Apollo
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.
Q 16What did Louis XIV use the Salon of Diana for?
Billiards
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.
Q 17Which sculptor's marble bust of Louis XIV stands in the Salon of Diana?
Bernini
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.
Q 18Versailles' Ambassadors' Staircase was demolished in 1752, but which king later built a copy of it in his own palace?
Ludwig II of Bavaria
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.
Q 19Which two daily ceremonies in the royal bedroom were watched by crowds of courtiers?
The lever and the coucher
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.
Q 20From the balcony of which room did Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette face the crowd on 6 October 1789?
The king's bedchamber
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.
Sold it at auction
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.
Q 24Which ruler turned Versailles into a museum dedicated to 'all the glories of France' in the 1830s?
Louis Philippe I
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.
Q 25Which famous canvas hangs in the palace's Coronation Room?
David's painting of Napoleon
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.
Q 26What was proclaimed in the Hall of Mirrors on 18 January 1871?
The German Empire
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.
Q 27The Treaty of Versailles was signed five years to the day after which event?
Franz Ferdinand's assassination
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.
Q 28Which American philanthropist paid for major repairs to the palace in the 1920s?
John D. Rockefeller Jr.
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.
Q 29Since 1875, France's two houses of parliament have met in joint session at Versailles to do what?
Amend the Constitution
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.
Q 30Which Olympic sports were held on the palace grounds in 2024?
Equestrian and pentathlon
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.