| You could spend the whole day just exploring the park at Versailles (daily 7am-dusk; E3; fountains play May-Sept Sun 11am-noon & 3.30-5pm),
along with its lesser outcrops of royal mania: the Italianate Grand Trianon,
designed by Hardouin-Mansart in 1687 as a "country retreat" for Louis XIV; and
the more modest Greek Petit Trianon, built by Gabriel in the 1760s for Louis
XV's mistress, Mme de Pompadour (daily: April-Oct noon-6.30pm; Nov-March
noon-5.30pm; combined ticket for both Trianons e5). More charming than either of
these is Le Hameau de la Reine, a play village and farm built in 1783 for
Marie-Antoinette to indulge the fashionable Rousseau-inspired fantasy of
returning to the natural life. It's quintessentially picturesque, but you can't
get inside and parts of the surrounding area may be off-limits for some years to
come while a massive redesign programme is underway. The plan is to turn the
catastrophe of the storms of December 1999 - when ten thousand trees in the park
were uprooted - into an opportunity to recreate the elaborate gardens as they
must have looked for the ill-fated queen. Distances in the park are considerable. If you can't manage them on foot, a
petit train shuttles between the terrace in front of the château and the
Trianons (E5). There are bikes for hire at the Grille de la Reine, Porte
St-Antoine and by the Grande Canal. Boats are for hire on the Grande Canal,
within the Park. Near the park entrance at the end of boulevard de la Reine is the Hôtel
Palais Trianon, where the final negotiations for the Treaty of Versailles took
place in 1919; the hotel has a wonderfully posh tearoom. The style of the
Trianon is very much that of the town in general. The dominant population is
aristocratic, with the pre-revolutionary titles disdainful of those dating
merely from Napoléon. On Bastille Day, local conservatives like to show their
colours, donning black ribbons and ties to mourn the passing of the ancien
régime.
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