Paris_ City Guide (Lonely Planet, 7th Edition) - Lonely Planet [263]
It was during the reign of Sun King Louis XIV (1643–1715) that Château de Versailles ( 0 810 811 614; www.chateauversailles.fr; palace ticket adult/under 18yr €13.50/free, from 4pm/3pm in low/high season €10/free, Passeport sold until 3pm adult/under 18yr €20/free Tue-Fri & €25/free Sat & Sun Apr-Oct, €16/free Nov-Mar; 9am-6.30pm Tue-Sun Apr-Oct, 9am-5.30pm Tue-Sun Nov-Mar) was built. The basic palace ticket and more elaborate Passeport both include an English-language audioguide and allow visitors to freely visit the palace’s state apartments, chapel, the Dauphin’s apartments and various galleries. The Passeport additionally gets you into the Grand Trianon and, in high season, the Grandes Eaux Musicales fountain displays. Enter the palace through Entrée A with a palace ticket; Entrée C with a Passeport.
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top picks
TGV CITY ESCAPES
It costs, but if you’re prepared to pay the pricey fare (the only downside of France’s otherwise impeccable, super-speedy rail service; Click here), France is your oyster as far as flitting elsewhere for a day or weekend goes. Our top five urban flits:
Lille (www.lille-tourism.com; €75-105 return; 1hr from Paris Gare du Nord) Lively Lille with its strong Flemish flavour, stylish shopping and student-driven nightlife, abuts Belgium. Hot date: first weekend in September during the mussel extravaganza, Braderie de Lille.
Lyon (www.lyon-france.com; €122-126 return, 2hr from Paris Gare de Lyon) Don’t tell Parisians, but France’s second-largest city is its true gastronomic capital. Wonderful museums, Roman relics, a thriving cultural scene, magnificent markets and fabulous dining make Lyon a cultured must. Avoid August, when everything is shut.
Marseille (www.marseille-tourisme.com; €191-266 return, 3hr from Paris Gare de Montparnasse) Raining in Paris, again? To cheer soggy spirits nothing beats watching the Mediterranean sun sink for another day over pastis (the local aniseed-flavoured aperitif) and bouillabaisse at Marseille’s Vieux Port.
Rennes (www.ville-rennes.fr; €104 return, 2hr from Paris Gare de Montparnasse) Crêperies, churches and half-timbered houses are the sweet lure of this picturesque old city, a university town and capital of Brittany.
Tours (www.ligeris.com; €80 return, 1¼hr from Paris Gare de Montparnasse & Gare d’Austerlitz) It’s not so much Tours – great cafés, buzzing bar life – as the mighty Loire Valley chateaux that can be reached from it. Essential viewing: Chenonceau and Chambord.
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Intended to house his court of 6000 people, the sheer scale and décor of Versailles reflected not only the absolute power of the French monarchy but also Louis XIV’s taste for profligate luxury and appetite for self-glorification. He hired four talented men to take on the gargantuan task: architect Louis Le Vau; Jules Hardouin-Mansart, who took over from Le Vau in the mid-1670s; painter and interior designer Charles Le Brun; and landscape designer André Le Nôtre, under whom entire hills were flattened, marshes drained and forests moved to create the seemingly endless gardens, ponds and fountains for which Versailles is so well known.
The vast chateau complex – get a map from the tourist office – divides into four main sections: the 580m-long palace building with its innumerable wings, halls and bedchambers and the King’s and Queen’s State Apartments; the vast gardens, canals and pools to the west of the palace; two smaller palaces known as the Grand Trianon and the Petit Trianon; and the Hameau de la Reine (Queen’s Hamlet). Few alterations have been made to the chateau since its construction, bar most of the interior furnishings disappearing during the Revolution and many of the rooms being rebuilt by Louis-Philippe (r 1830–48), who opened part of the chateau to the public in 1837. The current €370 million restoration programme is the