Château de Versailles, France

The Palace of Versailles is located around 20 kilometres away from Paris to the south-west, and is easily reachable by train from Paris.  Upon arriving at the train station you will immediately be accosted by various ticket sellers and tour guides offering "hassle free" ticketing for the Palace.

Honestly, I am not so sure it really requires that... we simply walked to the Palace and purchased tickets ourselves, there was no huge wait, and the process was quite painless.  

Keep in mind there are actually several different ticket options to choose from.

Trianon Palaces and Marie-Antoinette Estate: €10

Grand Trianon and gardens of the Grand Trianon, Petit Trianon, Queen's hamlet, French and Anglo-Chinese gardens, French pavilion, temple of Love...

The Palace: €15

The Palace's most famous places: the Hall of Mirrors, Grand Apartments of the King and of the Queen, King's Bedchamber...Exhibitions are included in the price of the ticket.

You also receive an audio tour guide which is available in multiple languages.

The Passport: €18

To discover the Versailles Estate in all its glory, the Passport gives you admission to all the Palace tours : grounds, Trianon palaces and Marie-Antoinette's Estate.  Exhibitions are included in the price of the ticket.
+ Musical Fountain Show, Musical Gardens (from April to October) €25.

Hidden Versailles: €16

Guided by a lecturer, you will discover the private apartments of Louis XV and Louis XVI, the Royal Opera or the Royal Chapel. These places are open only to accompanied groups.

Almost everything about Versailles screamed at me justification for the French Revolution, in my travels around Europe I have seen all manner of excess and gaudy gold encrusted fences.  But everything about this palace just screams obnoxiousness.  I honestly don't know how they ever lived with themselves.

Look at that thing.... seriously guys... its a gate!  Anyway, enough of my revulsion and on with the history lesson...
Originally Louis XIII had built a hunting lodge on the site in 1624 after being introduced to the area by its owner Albert de Gondi, in 1632 he purchased the land outright from the Gondi family and began expanding the lodge into a complete château.  This would later form the basis of the palace as it stands today.
When his son Louis XIV became king he set about transforming and expanding on the original château making it one of the biggest palaces in the world.
And in 1682 he moved the French court to the palace establishing it as the center of leadership.

 ‘A Toutes Les Gloires de la France’ – ‘To all the glories of France’
This was inscribed on the buildings during Louis XIV's reign between the years 1682 and 1715, and the palace really was testament to the French empire at that time.

Many years, and many wars, and many kings of France went on... the palace continued to be developed all the way through to 1788 and King Louis XVI... and this is where things started to get really interesting.
From 1776 Louis XVI had been supporting the American efforts to achieve their independence from Great Britain, this of course had come at quite a heavy cost, mostly to the citizenry.  This during a time period where the famous "Encyclopédie" had been released only a few years earlier promoting the idea of Enlightenment which caused enormous upset among the French nobility.

"If exclusive privileges were not granted, and if the financial system would not tend to concentrate wealth, there would be few great fortunes and no quick wealth. When the means of growing rich is divided between a greater number of citizens, wealth will also be more evenly distributed; extreme poverty and extreme wealth would be also rare." (Wealth, Diderot) - An excerpt from Encyclopédie which neatly summarized the situation in France at the time.

The people were paying excessive taxes to help save the country from the enormous debts it had incurred during the Seven Year War and the American Revolutionary War while the aristocracy paying significantly less tax were painting their ceilings gold.

So as we walked through the palace and looked at the numerous statues of French nobility taking on such mythic poses as above... I was really quite angry.  I had never really given much thought to the French Revolution, I never studied it in school and it was just a passing note in history to me.

But suddenly it all made sense... and I had to fight the urge to throw a few flaming torches onto the ridiculous furnishings myself.

Even their table lamps had to be chandeliers... these people were asking for it.

The Hall of Mirrors... quite possibly the most obnoxious room in the entire palace....the principal feature of the hall are the seventeen mirror-clad arches that reflect the seventeen arcaded windows that overlook the gardens. Each arch contains twenty-one mirrors with a total complement of 357 used in the decoration of the Hall of Mirrors.

This travel blog seems to have taken a very negative turn for the worst... and I really am trying to write something nice, to encourage you to visit this place.  But every time I think back on it I just want to slap a rich French person.

Look how smug she is right now... she won't be smirking like that when she is chased off by an angry mob.

The Queen's bedchamber, another fine example of excessive extravagance. There is a barely discernible 'hidden door' in the corner near the jewel cabinet through which Marie Antoinette escaped the night of 5/6 October 1789 when the Paris mob stormed Versailles.

Oh such bravery and valor depicted on the walls... here young master Napoleon Bonaparte fought somewhere around 15,000 Ottomans at Abu Qir, Egypt.  Though the painting makes it look like he managed this alone I think he may have had a few friends help out.
However he certainly makes a mockery of Louis XVI, who couldn't even manage 7,000 angry French women who arrived in Versailles with various canons and assorted weapons.

This is my friend Chrissy being a photographer... look how dashing she is! Like a secret agent!

Sadly when we visited the gardens were closed... so we really missed out on rather a lot of the grounds which would have been more interesting to me.  I shall go back sometime to visit them and post an update.

Who knows... by then I may stop hating everything this place represents.

NEXT UP! PRAGUE!

References:
Palace of Versailles - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_Versailles
Louis XVI - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XVI
Marie Antoinette - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie-Antoinette
Age of Englightenment - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment
Encyclopédie - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedie
The French Revolution - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution


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