Versailles Extended Tour from Paris (Palace with guide, gardens, the Trianons and the Queen’s Hamlet)

Overview

A nine-hour day from central Paris covering the palace with a guide and headsets, the gardens, both Trianons and Marie-Antoinette's Hamlet — the far end of the estate that most single-visit itineraries never reach.

What to expect

• Depart central Paris by air-conditioned coach.
• Reserved access into the palace, then the guided walk through the State Apartments and the Hall of Mirrors.
• The gardens, included whether or not the fountains are running that day.
• The walk or ride out to the Grand Trianon, in pink marble, built as somewhere to escape the court.
• The Petit Trianon, smaller and plainer, given to Marie-Antoinette for her own use.
• The Hamlet: a dozen cottages around a lake at the edge of the park.

The Hamlet was not a stage set

It looks like a toy village, and it is usually described as one. That is only half right.

Built in the early 1780s to a design by Richard Mique, the Hamlet had a working dairy, a mill, a barn, a poultry yard and vegetable plots, and it was farmed by real tenants. Cows and goats were kept, milk and cheese were produced and eaten by the household, and the vegetable beds supplied the kitchens. The queen did not milk anything, but the farm was not fictional. Estates all over Europe were building ornamented working farms in these years, and this was a very expensive example of a recognised fashion.

The theatre was in the building, not the farming

Where the artifice really sits is in the architecture. The cottages were designed to look old on the day they were finished: cracks were painted onto fresh plaster, timbers were distressed, roofs were given a deliberate sag. New buildings dressed as ruins.

That is worth knowing as you walk round, because the instinct is to assume the buildings are genuinely old and the farming was fake. It was precisely the other way round.

Why she wanted it

The court at Versailles ran on ceremony, and much of that ceremony was directed at the queen personally — who watched her dress, who handed her which garment, who had the right to be in the room. The Petit Trianon and the Hamlet were the one part of the estate where she set the rules and the etiquette was suspended.

That privacy was also held against her. The idea of a queen playing at country life became a stick to beat her with, and it did her real damage in the years before the revolution.

Practicalities

The Trianons and the Hamlet are a long way from the palace across the park, which is why they need a full day rather than an afternoon.

Lunch and drinks are not included, and there is no hotel collection — you make your own way to the departure point in Paris.

Garden entry is covered whether or not the fountain displays are scheduled, so the day works either way.