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Day Three: Versailles and Musée d'Orsay

Château de Versailles

The Château of Versailles,
Royal and Marble Courts

When you plan to go to Versailles, you think first how to get there - it's not in Paris even if it's close enough. The Château de Versailles is in the city of Versailles, located in the western suburbs of Paris (about 11 miles from it). Before I continue, let me tell you that for all information regarding the Château I strongly recommend to start your research with its official Web site. It's well organized and full of information regarding planning a visit to Versailles (including directions) and, more important, about the Chateau, its palaces, French kings and the life at their courts.

Well, assuming that the site gives the best recommendations, you can get there by RER line C direction Versailles-rive-gauche-château from Montparnasse station (and some other rail lines). Another option is to use bus from Pont de Sèvres line 171 of RATP direction Versailles-place d'Armes. Finally, you can go by car taking Motorway A13 (direction Rouen) exit Versailles-Château and parking your car on place d'Armes.

The Grand Trianon, Versailles

While planning your visit to the Château decide on how much time you want to spend there - this place is big, both literally and figuratively. It occupies 2,000 acres of grounds with 12 miles of roads and more than 200,000 trees. There are 50 fountains. The structures on grounds are not less impressive: the total area covered by roofs is 26 acres! The palace has more than 550,000 square feet with more than 700 rooms and 2,100 windows (one practical thing to keep in mind: there are no toilets at all (and never had been). It's decorated with 22,500 paintings, drawing and engravings, 2,100 sculptures and 5,000 items of furniture with great historical and artistic value. By some estimates (which many believe as grossly underestimated) the monetary value of Versailles is about US$2 billion (1994).

Versailles, the Queen's
bedchamber.

This brief statistics already reveals the grandeur of this place - it may take easily several days at Versailles just to walk it through. It is important not only to see the place but also to put everything you find into a historic and social context. I am talking about the life at the palace, its politics, role in history. After all, events of those days influenced and shaped significantly the whole world including America.

Now, let's get back to some practical things - we decided that we would spend at Versailles only half of the day, but we wanted to take advantage of all the time available to us. To this end, we asked a concierge at our hotel to provide us with a car and chauffeur to drive to Versailles and back and help us with the transportation at the place.

It turned out to be 300 Euros: expensive but worth the price. What we had got for the money? First, we really saved time (and energy) and were able to be at the place by its opening. We got out of the car almost in front of the entrance without worrying about anything - we just told our chauffeur where and when to wait for us.

Versaille's Chapel

Secondly, when we finished with the main palace (Le Château) including the front part of the garden, we used our car to visit the Grand Trianon and Petit Trianon as well as what is called Marie-Antoinette domain (The Queen's Hamlet and farm). These places are missed by many visitors, and now we understand why - without the car we would not have done this since exhaustion already started creeping in after several hours on feet.

Thirdly, it turned out to be a kind of semi-guided tour. Our driver could not accompany us inside the main palace (since he had to stay with the car); however, being a very educated person with a good knowledge of English, he told us a lot about French history and Versailles serving as a guide. We actually learned a lot from him not only about the times of the Louis XIV but also about Paris, its country side and people. When we asked him what he is thinking about French kings we laughed and said, "We hate them and like them at the same time." He actually explained what it means - it was a very pleasant and educational conversation with a person proud of his country and very opened to foreigners including two Americans.

Now, few words about Versailles. This page is not a place for an accurate account of the Château de Versailles - there are plenty of places where you can find one. But what I want to tell is that it was beyond what we expected. It's beautiful, and it's unique. You should see it to understand better France, the history of that country and its people. There are no reported ghosts in the palace but when you walk its floors, when you look at its magnificence and opulence, you can almost feel the presence of people who lived and frequented the Château. Strange - as if you have to go the place like this to convince yourself that all that for real and that history books are not enough anymore.

Part of Marie Antoinette's
private village

My recommendation is to seek for an additional knowledge about this place. It relates to kings who lived and ruled there, to people who built and decorated it, and to its architecture. To give you just a small detail to stimulate your thirst for this type of knowledge (if you do not already have it) - few people, for example, realize while looking at palace's gorgeous fountains (we did not) how much water is needed to feed them and to create enough pressure to make them function. But to make this thing work, a 120-mile network of channels, trenches, aqueducts, open-air and underground reservoirs, galleries, and pumps in the Versailles area eventually had to been created. It was devised by Louis XIV's mathematicians and engineers and remains unique for its technical ingenuity, its scope, and its state of preservation.

Unfortunately, we found that despite all attempts by the French government to maintain the palace there are definite signs of neglect. For example, look at the photo of the Royal and Marble Courts in front of the palace (the first photo at the top of the page) - sadly, it had to be retouched to remove weeds that find their ways through cracks in the pavement and loose stones. Not a pleasant view when you approach the façade of the palace.

This is not to say, that the place is abandoned - quite the opposite, there are projects one after another to restore the most important and very expensive parts of the Château. For example, we could not enjoy the full view of the famous galerie des glaces - The Hall of Mirrors - most part of it was under $16 million dollar restoration (actually sponsored by a private company). In 2007, the Hall was opened. We missed it, but it's nice to know that the place of such historic importance (not only for France - for example, the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I was signed here in 1919) and artistic value is available now for public enjoyment.

Also, it might be difficult to blame the French government for the insufficient funds for preservation. Versailles has always been expensive to maintain. If we look back in history, its huge cost contributed to the financial problems of the French government which were one of the causes of the French revolution in 18th century. Who knows, may be this is one of the history lessons the current government learned and does not want to repeat previous mistakes? By the way, the annual budget (2007) of the public entity entrusted with the preservation and maintenance of Versailles is more than $55 million. Its stuff is about 800 people including 18 art restores, 3 architects, 48 gardeners.

Musée d'Orsay

L'église d'Auvers-sur-
Oise (Church at Auvers-
sur-Oise), Van Gogh,
1890, Oil on canvas,
Musee d'Orsay, Paris

For the record - the Musée d'Orsay is a museum in Paris located in the former railway station, the Gare d'Orsay. It holds mainly French art dating from the second half of 19th century and early 20th century. It has a very large collection of impressionist art. So, if you like it and you are in Paris, do not miss this wonderful opportunity. That's why we included this museum in our plan.

With our transportation arrangement for Versailles, we asked our chauffeur to deliver us right to the front entrance of the museum. This save us a lot of time - it was already late afternoon, but we still had couple of hours to enjoy some of the expositions we wanted to see. In fact, our goal was Van Gogh rather than artists like Monet and Renoir who are presented very extensively at the Musée d'Orsay. It was just a personal preference but it fitted nicely the time we had.

Talking about the museum - when you are inside, you will notice immediately that the premises have not been built for the museum, and even if you do not know probably you will also guess immediately that it's a former railway station. However, its reconstruction resulted in a nice compromise between saving a dear to Parisians architectural masterpiece (which became unsuitable for its original purpose because of its small size) and finding a location for a museum that could host the art from The Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume (which also became too small for all the collections it had accumulated).

Art collections at the Musée d'Orsay are extensive, but of course it's not as big as Louvre or Versailles. According to the official data, the museum has 680 paintings on its floor with the total of 5,026 art objects cataloged. The museum's Web site can help you get familiar with its floor plan and has detailed accounts and descriptions of all art displayed. Use the site search feature - for example, it can find all the paintings displayed in the museum and can show their locations in the building.

As for Vincent van Gogh, the museum has 18 of his paintings located at the upper flow in section 35. Not a lot taking into account that van Gogh produced almost 900 paintings, but fortunately for me, some of may favorites are at the Musée d'Orsay: L'église d'Auvers-sur-Oise, vue du chevet (1890, Portrait de l'artiste (1889) and Portrait de l'artiste (1887)

Part I - Coming to Paris
Part 2 - Our Hotel: First Steps
Part 3 - Day Two: Musée du Louvre, Notre Dame de Paris and La Conciergerie
Part 4 - Day Three: Versailles and Musée d'Orsay
Part 5 - Day Four: City of Paris - Right Bank
Part 6 - Day Five: City of Paris - Left Bank