Versailles, royal setting for horse riding.
Favorite of tourists, symbol of monarchical splendor and showcase of diplomacy, the Château de Versailles, sumptuous setting for the equestrian events of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris, shines with its excess.
2,300 rooms, 830 hectares of gardens
A simple hunting lodge in 1623, the Château de Versailles today has 2,300 rooms spread over 63,154 m² covered with 352 fireplaces, 67 staircases, 13 hectares of roofs… To which are added 830 hectares of gardens designed by André Le Nôtre, crisscrossed by more than 40 kilometers of paths.
A count from 1722, during the reign of Louis XV, shows 4,000 people living at the castle, including princes, lords, officers and servants. Replaced today by a large number of tourists: 8.1 million in 2023, 77% foreigners. The castle is the third most visited site in France (behind Disneyland Paris and the Louvre Museum).
Bling bling and big game
The splendor of the festivals and shows organized by the Sun King, the builder of the palace, then by Marie-Antoinette, last queen of the Ancien Régime, still fits the image of the place. These castle lives which continue to be reborn in the cinema, as in Sofia Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette” in 2005.
The Hall of Mirrors has since seen many other crowned heads pass through. From Queen Victoria in 1855, invited by Napoleon III for a gigantic ball with 1,200 guests, to Charles III in 2023 who tasted blue lobster in Sèvres porcelain.
Politics and treaties
These honors are not reserved for kings and queens: De Gaulle welcomes the Shah of Iran, Nikita Khrushchev or the Kennedy couple. His successors, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin… The Treaty of Versailles was also signed there on June 28, 1919, which ended the conflict between the Allies and Germany. And it was also at the Château that France included voluntary termination of pregnancy (IVG) in its Constitution last March.
Advent of modernity
For more than 15 years, the Château has presented each year a contemporary artist such as Joana Vasconcelos, Giuseppe Penone or Olafur Eliasson. The American troublemaker Jeff Koons had, in 2008, opened the ball with exhibitions but also with controversies: some deeming the intrusion of his very kitsch work into a place marked by classicism unsuitable.
Same fate for the manga fantasies of Takashi Murakami (2010) and especially the monumental installation by the British Anish Kapoor nicknamed “The Queen’s Vagina” (2015). Since 2019, a Versailles Electro evening has been dedicated to the French Touch. Electro music also resonated in the Hall of Mirrors on Christmas Eve 2023 when Jean-Michel Jarre performed there for the 400th anniversary of the castle.
