How to Visit the Palace of Versailles in 2026

Three things catch people out at Versailles, and all three are fixable in the five minutes it takes to read this. The Trianon estate opens at midday. The gardens cost money for half the year and nothing for the other half. And skip-the-line does not mean what you think it means.

The first thing: the estate opens in two halves

The Palace runs 9.00am to 6.30pm from April to October, and to 5.30pm from November to March. The Estate of Trianon — the Grand Trianon, the Petit Trianon and Marie-Antoinette's Queen's Hamlet — does not open until midday, every day, in both seasons. The gardens and the park open earlier than either, from 7.00am in summer.

That midday opening decides more Versailles itineraries than anything else, and almost nobody publishes it prominently. A three-hour morning tour cannot include Trianon, however it is advertised. If Marie-Antoinette's estate is why you are coming, you want an afternoon or a full day. The Trianon estate page has the walking times from the Palace door.

The Palace is also closed every Monday, along with 25 December, 1 January and 1 May. The gardens and the park stay open every day of the year, which makes a Monday walk down to the Grand Canal a perfectly good use of a day you thought you had lost.

The second thing: which ticket, and when the gardens are free

The estate sells three things you might want, and one of them covers almost everybody.

Prices as published by the estate. A free ticket still needs a booked time slot.

The garden rule is the one worth knowing. From November to late March the gardens are free to everyone, every day. From April to early November you need a ticket only on Musical Gardens and Musical Fountains Show days, and some guided departures bundle it while others exclude it in so many words. The events page has the 2026 season dates.

There is one more free rule that almost nobody uses: the whole estate is open free of charge on the first Sunday of the month from November to March. It is busy, and it is free.

The third thing: skip-the-line skips the ticket office

Every guided departure sells fast-track or skip-the-line access, and the phrase is narrower than it sounds. A timed Passport guarantees you get into the Palace within half an hour of the time you picked. That is a slot, not a fast lane, and on a July morning the queue you can see from the courtyard is the security check rather than the ticket desk.

Getting there from Paris

Versailles is its own town about 20 kilometres south-west of Paris, and nothing on the Metro reaches it. Three suburban lines do, and which you take should depend on where you are staying rather than which station is nearest the gates.

• RER C to Versailles Château – Rive Gauche. Closest, about ten minutes' walk. Best from the 5th, 6th, 7th and anywhere near the river.
• Gare Montparnasse to Versailles Chantiers. Fastest train, 17 to 18 minutes' walk at the other end.
• Gare Saint-Lazare to Versailles Rive Droite. Same walk, best from the 8th, 9th and 17th.
• Bus 171 from Pont de Sèvres. About thirty minutes on an ordinary Paris bus ticket, and slower than all three trains.

Buy a ticket to the Versailles station by name; a Metro ticket will not do it, and the fare zones are different. Getting there compares all three routes in a table.

How long to allow, and in what order

Ninety minutes covers the State Apartments at a guided pace. Palace and gardens is three to four hours. Palace, gardens and Trianon is a full day, and the estate's own suggested shape is the Palace at nine, the gardens from ten to midday, then Trianon from midday to half past four. That order exists because of the opening times rather than because of the view.

The distances are the part people underestimate. It is about thirty minutes on foot from the Palace to the Grand Trianon and another fifteen to the Queen's Hamlet, on flat gravel with almost no shade. The map page lists every leg in minutes, and the little train and the hired bikes both cut it substantially.

What you cannot bring, and what to carry

Large bags and suitcases do not come in. The automatic lockers take items up to 46 × 43 × 26 cm, so a day pack is fine and cabin luggage is not. Photography is allowed without flash. There is no air conditioning in the State Apartments, which in July and August is the single most common complaint travellers make about the visit.

Do you need a guided tour at all?

No, and it is worth saying so plainly. You can buy a Passport, take the RER and walk in. What a guided departure buys is a held entry slot, an edited route through 2,300 rooms and someone who knows which door leads where. About half of the departures here also take the journey from Paris off your hands, which on a first visit is the part most worth paying for.

The arithmetic is straightforward. A Passport is €35 and the return RER fare is a few euros more. A guided day from Paris starts at $75 with both of those inside it. If your time is worth anything at all, the guided version is not the expensive option — it is the one where somebody else has already solved the morning. A Paris to Palace of Versailles tour is the simplest version of that.

The short version

1. Book a morning slot, and book it before you fly.
2. Buy the Passport unless you are skipping the Palace.
3. Palace first, gardens second, Trianon in the afternoon.
4. Not Monday. Not the middle of a July day if you can help it.
5. Day pack only, water in summer, shoes you can stand up in.

Everything else is detail, and the FAQs have it.

Start with planning your visit if you would rather work it out yourself. Every departure is on Palace of Versailles Tours.