Versailles Palace Guided Tour with Gardens Access
Timed entryTrianon estateHeadsets
From $99 per person
Inside the Palace of Versailles
Two thousand three hundred rooms across 63,154 square metres, and a guided visit shows you perhaps fifteen of them. This page is what those fifteen are, in the order the visit route runs, so you know what you are looking at when you get there.
A hunting lodge is still standing in the middle of it
Walk into the Cour d'Honneur and look at the narrow building at the far end, in red brick and pale stone with a slate roof. That is the Marble Court, and the core of it is the hunting lodge Louis XIII built in 1624 and rebuilt between 1631 and 1634. Louis XIV was told to demolish it and refused. Everything else you can see was wrapped around it from 1661 onwards.
The Marble Court and the Royal Gate
The gilded railing across the front is the Grille Royale, and it is the picture most visitors take before they take any other. The black-and-white paving behind it is the Marble Court itself, and the balcony above the three central arches is the King's own. The whole facade is a lesson in what the estate spends its money on: gold leaf, and a great deal of it.
The Hall of Mirrors — 73 metres, 357 mirrors, 1678 to 1684
Jules Hardouin-Mansart built it over what had been an open terrace, and the numbers are the point. Seventeen arches of mirror face seventeen windows, carrying 357 panes in all, at a time when Venice held the European monopoly on making them. Charles Le Brun painted the 30 compositions on the vault, covering Louis XIV's reign from 1661 to the peace treaties of Nijmegen. The throne stood on a platform at one end.
Two events since have made the room famous outside France. The German Empire was proclaimed here in 1871, and the Treaty of Versailles was signed here on 28 June 1919, ending the First World War. Both happened where you will now be queuing for a photograph.
The King's Grand Apartment
Seven rooms named after planets and gods — Hercules, Abundance, Venus, Diana, Mars, Mercury and Apollo — laid out as a ceremonial route rather than as somewhere anyone slept. This is the sequence a guided tour walks you along on the way to the Hall of Mirrors, and the ceilings are the reason to look up rather than ahead.
The Queen's Grand Apartment
The mirror of the King's rooms on the south side, and the more human half of the visit. The Queen's Bedchamber is the room to slow down in: the gilded balustrade separating the bed from the rest of the room is where the court stood to watch a queen give birth in public. Nineteen royal children were born in it.
The War Salon and the Peace Salon
These two bracket the Hall of Mirrors, one at each end, and they are easy to walk straight through. The War Salon carries Antoine Coysevox's oval relief of Louis XIV on horseback. The Peace Salon at the other end was later used by Marie-Antoinette as a music room.
The Royal Chapel
The tallest space in the building, and the one most people photograph twice — once from the tribune where the King sat, once from the nave below. It was finished in 1710. On an ordinary visit you look into it rather than walk through it, which is why the photographs are all taken from the same two positions.
The Royal Opera
Built for the marriage of the future Louis XVI in 1770, in wood painted to look like marble, partly for acoustics and partly for cost. It is not always open to a standard ticket, and it is a working theatre with its own programme. If it matters to you, check before you go rather than hope.
The Gallery of Battles and the 1837 museum
Versailles is formally the Museum of the History of France, founded by Louis-Philippe in 1833 and opened in 1837. The dedication is carved across the pediment above the courtyard: to all the glories of France. The Gallery of Battles is the biggest expression of that idea — a 120-metre room of enormous canvases covering fourteen centuries of French military history, and one of the last things a full visit reaches.
The Coach Gallery
Across the Place d'Armes in the Great Stables, and free to enter. It holds the royal carriages, sledges and sedan chairs, including the coronation coach. In high season it opens only at weekends and on public holidays, from 12.30pm, so it is an afternoon addition rather than a plan.
The rooms in order, and what to give each one
A guided departure covers the first nine of these in about ninety minutes. The Coach Gallery is across the Place d'Armes and free.
| Room | Where it comes in the route | Give it |
|---|---|---|
| The Royal Chapel | first, from the tribune | 5 minutes |
| Hercules Salon | top of the stairs | 3 minutes |
| The King's Grand Apartment | seven rooms in sequence | 20 minutes |
| The War Salon | at the end of the King's rooms | 3 minutes |
| The Hall of Mirrors | the middle of the visit | 10 minutes |
| The Peace Salon | the far end of the Hall | 3 minutes |
| The Queen's Grand Apartment | turning back along the south side | 15 minutes |
| The Queen's Bedchamber | inside the Queen's rooms | 5 minutes |
| The Gallery of Battles | near the exit | 10 minutes |
| The Coach Gallery | separate building, afternoons only | 30 minutes |
What a ticket does not open
Plenty. The private apartments of the King and Queen, the Opera and several of the smaller cabinets are shown on the estate's own guided tours, which are booked separately and cost €10 to €16 on top of admission. A standard visit, guided or not, is the State Apartments and the Hall of Mirrors. That is still a good ninety minutes.
If you only have ninety minutes. Give the Hall of Mirrors ten of them and the Queen's Bedchamber five, and let the planetary rooms go by at a walk. A Versailles palace skip-the-line guided tour holds a timed entry slot for you, which is the part that actually costs time. Planning your visit covers the rest.
Frequently asked
How long is the Hall of Mirrors? Seventy-three metres. Can you photograph inside? Yes, without flash. Is it wheelchair accessible? The estate publishes step-free routes and lends wheelchairs, though almost every guided departure listed here states that its own tour is not. More in the questions people ask most, and the rooms in sequence in the room-by-room guide. Every departure that gets you inside is on Palace of Versailles Tours.
Tours that walk you through these rooms
Versailles Palace Private Tailored Guided Tour With Hotel Pickup
Private groupHotel pickup
From $584 per person
Versailles Palace Full Day or Half Day Tour with Local Guide
Gardens includedMax 20
From $102 per person