Paris Blog: 4 Weeks in the City of Lights: Château de Versailles

Sorry for keeping everyone waiting... it's hard to blog every night when we get home so exhausted from all of our excursions. Here's one with lots of pictures to make up for it :)

On June 22nd, we visited Château de Versailles, a ginormous and breathtaking palace, in a suburb right outside of Paris. To understand the significance of this place, it's important that I share with you all a little bit of history [see Dad, I'm learning a lot over here]. Louis XIV, also known as Louis the Great or the Sun King wanted to put an end to the remnants of feudalism in the various regions of France. To accomplish this he moved his entire court (the nobility) into the Palace of Versailles, thereby allowing him to have absolute monarchical rule over all of France, especially the aristocracy who he feared might rebel against him. Apparently his plan worked as he was the longest reigning King in European history.

The royal family lived at Versailles until 1789 when they were forced to move back to the city during the French Revolution. Many know of Marie Antoinette, who had a very unpopular reputation in France at the time she was queen. Interestingly, Marie Antoinette often spent her time at le petite trianon, basically the smaller version of the palace, where she could escape the pressure and judgement from her family and the court as well as her responsibilities. She's also famous for saying "Let them eat cake!" but it's not actually confirmed. Ironically, what brought the royal family back to Paris was the Women's March on Versailles also known as the Bread March. The women in the marketplace of Paris decided to march all the way to Versailles to demand bread and lower food prices because they were starving. You can imagine how enraged the people of France were when they knew how luxurious Versailles was while they couldn't even afford bread.

Instead of describing Versailles to you, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. But by no means do they capture the real magnitude or ornate design of the entire palace or grounds.

Prepare to be marveled!

Palace of Versailles from afar; they were doing some reconstruction on the right side which takes away from the picture a bit, but I just thought the little boy in the cowboy hat was too precious!

I thought their ceilings were just spectacular

Entrance to the Hall of Mirrors

The famous Hall of Mirrors

View of the back of the palace and some pretty clouds :)

This is an oil painting of Marie Antoinette and her children. She actually had 4 children, but the youngest baby Princess Sophia died at 11 months. In the painting you will see an empty crib. When the first painting was made there was 4 children, but Princess Sophia was painted out because of the pain it caused Marie Antoinette.

Bedroom inside Le Petite Trianon

This part of Versailles was my absolute favorite! It's a little village that Marie Antoinette had made for her so she could "play as a peasant." It just symbolized how disconnected Marie Antoinette was from the people of France. But the little cottages were very charming so it was a great picture opportunity.