Paris - part 5 (Versailles)

On our way back from Chartres we stopped in the city of Versailles, France. Not to be confused with Versailles, Ohio (population 2,589, home of the six-time state football champion Tigers, and the Poultry Days festival). Versailles is now a wealthy suburb of Paris.


However, it was the unofficial capital of France from 1682-1715 and 1722-1799 when a couple of Louis' moved from the city and again from 1871-1879 during an insurrection in Paris. The official royal palace at these times was still the Palace of the Louvre, but government was conducted in Versailles.
Above, we are approaching the palace in the freezing cold weather. We arrived a little late and only had an hour to tour the palace. So Sarah and I rushed through. It is immense. You can't see the whole thing in this picture.


Here is the chapel. Not too shabby.


Here is a hallway with statues of random French folk. Some facts from wikipedia: Versailles has 11 hectares of roofing surface area, over 51,000 square meters of floor space, 700 rooms, 2,152 windows, 67 staircases, and over 20,000 works of different kinds of art. In case you're in to that kind of thing.


I don't know how many fireplaces it had for its 700 rooms, but if they actually used logs this big they must have cut down all the trees in France to keep it warm.


Here is the famous Hall of Mirrors, which is also its central gallery. This is the room in which the Treaty of Versailles was signed, ending World War I.


This is...another room. I forget what it was. But boy! isn't it neat? We pretty much were running through at this point, trying to make sure we saw everything before it closed.

The palace is currently exhibiting some works of art (I guess) by Jeff Koons. Below are four examples of his 17 "sculptures" on display.


I do not mean to say anything bad about his art. I just don't get some of it. Here is a blow-up lobster beach toy hung from the ceiling by a red plastic chain. Genius!


One of the best: a statue of Michael Jackson with Bubbles. Precious. I'm just following in my blog's long tradition of showing wonderful works of art.


We actually really liked this one. It's just an odd gallery in which to display it.


Here's another one we liked. It was located at the end of the Hall of Mirrors and actually worked very well in the space.


The back side of the chateau. The grounds stretch back for a long, long way. The gardens alone cover 800 hectares. The gardens also have 50 fountains, 620 jets of water, a 23 hectare Grand Canal, 200,000 trees, and has 210,000 flowers planted annually. One of these days I'm going to have to find out how big a hectare is.


Here is the palace from the back. We had an additional hour to tour the grounds after the palace closed, but by that point and at that temperature we didn't feel like lingering.


Sarah smiles, despite the cold.


We walked around for a while before we found the exit. There's a lot of ground to cover there if you go the wrong way in search of the exit. This view of the city of Versailles is from the front of the palace. It is a beautiful town, but we didn't have much time to explore it. We headed back to the train station apart from the group because everyone went their separate ways in the palace. Rather than taking the regional train back, we went to a different station that has a train that lead straight into Paris and becomes one of the subway lines.
The Paris trip will continue on the Ile de la Cite...