Explorer Versailles

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.

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.

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.

The Maison de Balzac is a writer's house museum at 47 Rue Raynouard in Passy, the only surviving residence of novelist Honoré de Balzac. He rented its ground-floor apartment from 1840 to 1847 under a false name while hiding from creditors, and wrote much of La Comédie humaine there. The city of Paris acquired the house in 1949.