Trip to Versailles?

Question

I'll be in Paris for five days, would it be worth my while to take a half day or day to visit Versailles. I've read a ton of background history about the Palace and rulers who stayed there and it interested me a lot. Thanks

Answer 1

Versailles is an excellant day trip.

You can take packaged tours there but the way to do it on the cheap is to take the metro line 9 to Pont de Sevres. Walk upstairs and you'll see a bus stop. Take bus # 171 (you will need three metro tickets) and it will drop you off at the front gate. The bus trip will take 25-30 minutes. Figuring one metro ticket to get to the bus stop and then 3 tickets for the bus, the entire transportation part will cost you only 8 metro tickets (4 each way). its open every day except Monday and the admission cost is 20 euros during the week and 25 euros on the weekends for a pass that allows you into all the various buildings and sights on the grounds.

Versailles is an important part of the history of France and seeing it is a very valuable experience.

When you see the main palace and the two smaller palaces, the Grand and Petit Trianons you can grasp the fabulous wealth and power of the French kings.

As you look at the gilded and mirrored walls, the magnificiant murals and statuary that enrichs the vast rooms consider that when these buildings were filled with nobles dressed in silks and brocade the common people of France lived in hovels with dirt floors and were lucky to eat meat once a month. The rural people were called "sans culottes" (which means "without pants") because their only clothing was a simple cloth smock. They froze in the winters and starved most of their brief lives which were so filled with unremitting toil that they were old by 35.

Go view the "Hameau de la Reine" a mock rural village where Marie Antoinette and her cavaliers played at being "simple folk" minus, of course, the hard work and filth and with banquests laid out with barrels of wine to refresh them.

Here is one of those great monuments to the abuse of power and the greed and thougtlessness of the few who ignored the common people to their eventual regret.

Louis XIV enjoy the palace he had built as did his son Louis XV . But Louis XV was bright enough to know it could not last. "Après moi le deluge, (after me the flood)" he said. And his son Louis XVI would live and die in the flood that followed when he and his Queen ended their lives on the scafold, cursed by the people who their line had abused and debased.

Go to Versailles and say the words that Shelley puts in the mouth of his mythical king. Ozymandias:

`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'

Perhaps this is a lesson that every nation and its leaders must learn.

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Answer 2

Yes very good!
The palace was totally emptied in the french revolution by the people because they where starving of hunger.
Most of the interior is found back about 70% later at the reign of Napoleon just around the neighborhood in common houses.

Answer 3

Versailles is beautiful. I went with a student group, and even though we only had an hour there, it was fabulous!