Explorar Élancourt

France Miniature is an outdoor miniature park in Élancourt, west of Paris, opened in 1991. More than a hundred French monuments and sites, from the Mont-Saint-Michel to Versailles, are reproduced at 1:30 scale across a landscape laid out like a map of France, with model trains running between them and rides for young children.

The formal gardens of the Château de Versailles, covering about 800 hectares west of the palace and laid out from the 1660s by André Le Nôtre in the French formal style he perfected there. Parterres, statues, fountains and the Grand Canal are set within a surrounding belt of woodland, bordered by the towns of Versailles and Le Chesnay.

A single-storey château in pink marble and stone at the northwestern edge of the Versailles estate, built from 1687 by Jules Hardouin-Mansart as a retreat for Louis XIV away from the strict etiquette of court. It replaced an earlier porcelain-tiled pavilion on the same site and stands beside its own park, which includes the Petit Trianon.

A Neoclassical château on the Versailles estate, built between 1762 and 1768 to a design by Ange-Jacques Gabriel for Louis XV's mistress, Madame de Pompadour, on the site of an earlier botanical garden. Louis XVI later gave it to his wife, Marie Antoinette, who used it as a private retreat away from the formality of the main palace.

The Palace of Versailles is a former royal château in the Yvelines department, southwest of Paris. Built up from a hunting lodge under Louis XIV, it served as the principal residence of the French kings from 1682 until the French Revolution and houses the Hall of Mirrors. It now anchors an estate that also includes the gardens and the Trianon palaces.

The Arboretum de Versailles-Chèvreloup is a tree collection of the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle covering about 200 hectares beside the park of the Palace of Versailles. Planting began in 1924 on a former royal hunting ground; trees are grouped by botanical family, by region of origin and as garden varieties, and there are greenhouses and a fuchsia garden.