The Chateau de Versailles

We slept in a little and didn't arrive at the palace at Versailles until about 10:30 am. There is a metro station about a 2 minute walk from our front door, and the metro arrives about a 10 minute walk from the palace. Total travel time was a little under an hour, as the palace was originally Lois XIV's "hunting lodge," and it was located out of town. Of course a little town has sprung up around it since it was built. We found a great app for my cell phone that maps out the route for you if you put in a beginning and ending station...easy, peasy. There was one minor glitch in that the #1 line splits, and we took the wrong split for one extra stop, but quickly got back on track (literally).

We noticed that security is pretty tight at all the venues...in the aftermath of the big terrorist attacks last year. There were roaming special forces troops with m4's in groups of three that patrol the grounds, and all bags are checked before entry is allowed.

Here is a picture of the palace from the front entrance:

My first impression was that this place is huge. We are about 500 yards from the entrance, and I can't even get the whole thing in with a wide angel lens. We are standing in front of a statue of Lois XIV. Here is a better picture of the statue:

Here are a couple of closer shots of the courtyard exteriors. Notice that the figures are all carved marble, the columns are marble, and trim is gilded. I guess Lois had money to burn!

One of the first rooms you come to inside is the chapel. Apparently Louis was a religious man and, even though he was here to hunt with his friends, he thought attending church was important enough to build this magnificent room:

Here is a view from the second floor of the same chapel:

Kings were art collectors, and they commissioned much of the great art that exists today. One thing I noticed right away is that some of the paintings are huge. Here is an example that takes up about 70 square meters..or about the size of the apartment we are staying in! It is a painting of one of the feasts that Christ attended. The figures are about life sized..maybe a little smaller:

Some of the best art work is actually painted on the ceilings of many of the rooms. Here is a good example:

Here is an even better example:

The private quarters were pretty well appointed. The walls are covered with brocaded fabrics. There are lots of mirrors. There are lots of portraits of self and family members. There are marble busts of famous figures from antiquity, and there is lots of gold everywhere.

Mirrors were relatively new to the world when this chateau was constructed, and Lois thought it would be impressive to have a hall full of them. It is pretty impressive:

Here's Lois up close. Notice the detail:

You get a sense of how long these rooms have been here by walking on the staircases. You can feel how the marble has worn over the centuries with your feet. Like everything else, the materials used were first class, but you can see in the second photo how some of the marble has had to be replaced.

This is the "Hall of Battles" where the great battles of French history were memorialized. It seems to go on forever, but the paintings are quite large and very detailed, as you can see.

Here I am standing at the rear of the Chateau. The ground floor housed the women, the center floor housed the great halls, where the king slept and did all of his business, and we never did find out what was on the top floors as they were closed to the public.

The back of the Chateau looks out onto the gardens and the hunting grounds. They are huge, and it was a cold and rainy day, so we strolled around for awhile, but the girls got too cold. They rented golf carts for those who wanted to avoid the long walks, but they were $40 per hour, so we skipped that. Here is a small sample of the grounds in winter. I can't imagine how beautiful this would be in the spring.

We saw tons more than you see here, but still, only about one third of the Chateau is open to the public. It is absolutely huge. Neither words nor pictures can do it justice. We had a late lunch at a little restaurant just outside the gates and then headed for home on the Metro...with one stop at the Eiffel Tower for a quick look.

And here we are on the ride home.