Château de Versailles

Officially the Château de Versailles, this elaborate home has 720,000 square feet of floor space.  By comparison, Biltmore has 179,000 and the White House a mere 55,000. 

Soooo, you could fit 3 Biltmores and 3 White Houses in this one building with room to spare for Monticello and a couple of McMansions.

The Chapel of Versailles

This is the 5th chapel on this site. Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI were married in this very chapel.  She was only 15 years old.

There was an art exhibition in one wing of the castle and pictures were forbidden so I took only a few  . . . 

until this "guard" walked out and reprimanded me as I was taking this photo.  We were the very first people to enter the palace on this day.  We had it nearly to ourselves for about a minute.

Anyway, I wanted to tell this guard she would have her work cut out for her when the swarm of Asians in line behind us descended on this hallway.  They've got a camera hanging from every body part.  Good luck with that.

Most windows had this hardware.  I googled it, but didn't really find out what it stands for - Louis Philippe, perhaps.  It is really beautiful  - whatever it means.

You can see a small portion of the nearly 1,000 acres of formal gardens at Versailles.  I read that King Louis valued them as much as the palace itself. 

This is just one of the 67 staircases in this palace.

One of over 2,000 windows.  I love this window and the black and white tile floor.

Every room had a similar, elaborately painted ceiling.  It was almost like being at St. Peter's in Rome.

Every inch of this place is huge in scale.  Those are full size trees in that fireplace!

It seemed that if it wasn't marble, it was silver and gold.

Every painting throughout the palace is enormous and each a masterpiece on its own.  Check out the size of that painting at the end of the room.  Oh, and this is part of the swarm I mentioned earlier.  We also weren't the only non-Asians.  There were about 5 of us.

Marie Antoinette in her better days.  She reigned as queen of France for 18 years and was ultimately executed by guillotine at the age of 37.  Those hungry Parisians apparently wanted more than just brioche.

This is her bedroom. That door on the left is touted as being her escape route when those pesky peasants came calling.

Another ceiling - a work of art in its own right.

I took this picture in an effort to illustrate a couple of non-Asians.  Actually, I took it to illustrate that you can see the palace is room after room after room of unbelievable floor-to-ceiling extravagance.

Hope you will return for more on the Château de Versailles.