Palace of Versailles in a Day: Tickets and Opening Hours

You can see the Palace of Versailles, the Trianon palaces, Marie-Antoinette’s Estate and the gardens in one day, and the Passport ticket at €35 (about $38, £30) is the ticket that covers all of it. The Palace closes on Mondays, the Trianon estate does not open until noon, and the gardens are free on most days but charged during the fountain shows, which is the combination that catches most first-time visitors out.

We drove down from Leuven for the day, in France, and it worked. This is how the day went, followed by what a visit costs now, when everything is actually open and how to get there from Paris.

Visiting the Palace and Park of Versailles

Versailles works as a day trip from further away than people expect, because the estate is a single site and the drive is motorway most of the way. When I told people I was going to Versailles for the day they thought I was underestimating it. “That far, in only a day?” But Versailles is 350 km (217.5 mi) from Leuven, about three and a half hours in the car, traffic permitting.

It hurt a bit, getting up at 7 on a Saturday morning, and we left home around 8. The drive went smoothly until the périphérique, the ring road around Paris, which is famous for its jams and lived up to it. We lost more than half an hour there and reached Versailles at 11.50 am. We put the palace address into the GPS and found it without trouble. There were no free spaces on the road up to the palace and street parking in Versailles is not free, so we used the paid car park on the Place d’Armes directly in front of the entrance.

Starting with the Versailles park

Do the gardens first and the Palace later, because the queue at the main gate is longest in the middle of the morning and the gardens never queue at all. When we reached the main courtyard there was a long line waiting to get in. We had skip-the-line tickets and still went to the gardens first.

We walked from the Latona Fountain down the Royal Way to the Fountain of Apollo’s Chariot, then on to the Grand Canal. The canal is 1,670 m (1.0 mi) long and took 11 years to dig, from 1668 to 1679, and it is the reason the view from the Hall of Mirrors runs to the horizon. Along its banks we found locals lying on the grass, running and picnicking, exactly as they would in any city park, because the Park beyond the formal gardens is free and open every day of the year.

The Grand and Petit Trianon

Turn right at the end of the Grand Canal for the Trianon palaces, and remember that they do not open until noon. We were surprised to find that photographs are allowed inside the Grand Trianon, which is not true everywhere on the estate.

We came out hungry. There are takeaway stands and a restaurant in the grounds, and the prices looked reasonable when we checked, but we had brought sandwiches, so we ate looking over a side arm of the Grand Canal before walking on to the Petit Trianon. If you are doing the same, note that the walk from the Palace to the Trianon estate is about 30 minutes on foot through the gardens and park, or 20 minutes on the little train or an electric vehicle.

Marie-Antoinette’s Estate

Marie-Antoinette’s Estate was our favourite part of the day, and it looks nothing like the rest of Versailles. Where the main gardens are ruled straight lines, the Queen’s ground is deliberately wild: narrow paths, planting that runs loose, and at the end of it the Queen’s Hamlet, a mock village with a dairy, a mill and a farm around a lake.

The point of it is the contrast. Le Nôtre’s gardens were built to show a king imposing order on nature; the Hamlet was built sixty years later, when the fashion had swung to landscape gardens that looked untouched. Walking from one into the other in twenty minutes is the clearest lesson in 18th-century taste anyone will give you.

The Palace of Versailles

The Palace itself was my least favourite part of the day, which surprised me. After everything I had read I expected to be overwhelmed, and it left me a little cold. I had been to Windsor Castle in the UK not long before and found Windsor more richly furnished, with more art and objects in the rooms. The crowds did not help: you can barely see anything with tour groups moving you along.

The one room that does deliver is the Hall of Mirrors. It is 73 m (239.5 ft) long, built between 1678 and 1684 by Jules Hardouin-Mansart, and its 357 mirrors are set into 17 arches facing the windows. Those mirrors were the point: at the time Venice held a near-monopoly on mirror-making, and a hall on that scale was France announcing that its own manufacture could match it. Le Brun’s 30 ceiling paintings above them cover the first eighteen years of Louis XIV’s reign.

The day’s conclusion

Versailles is worth the trip, but do not come for the Palace alone. Visit everything. The parks and gardens are the better half of the estate and they are far less crowded than the state apartments.

We left around 5.30 pm, paid for the car park, and feared another jam on the périphérique. It was busy, but the queue was on the other carriageway, and we were home in Leuven in a little over three hours. We had done Versailles in a day.

There are other ways to do it. You can spend a weekend, or pair Versailles with a smaller city such as Amiens. You can also add it to Paris, which is about 30 minutes away by car and 30 to 40 minutes by train, and treat it as one day of a longer city trip.

Practical information

How to get to the palace of Versailles?

The train is the simplest way from Paris, and three stations serve the town. The palace address is Place d’Armes, 78000 Versailles.

1. Versailles Château – Rive Gauche: 10 minutes on foot from the palace, and the closest of the three. RER line C arrives here.
2. Versailles Rive Droite: 17 minutes on foot. SNCF line P trains from Gare Saint-Lazare arrive here.
3. Versailles Chantiers: 18 minutes on foot. SNCF lines N and U from Gare Montparnasse arrive here.

Fares are simpler than older guides suggest. Île-de-France Mobilités abolished the old zone-based pricing for single journeys in January 2025, so one flat Metro-Train-RER ticket now covers a trip from central Paris to Versailles at around €2.55 (about $3, £2), the same as a hop across the city. Buy two, one each way, or travel on a Navigo, Mobilis or Paris Visite pass. The ticket is digital, loaded onto a Navigo Easy card or a phone.

RATP bus line 171 runs from Pont de Sèvres, the terminus of Paris metro line 9, to the palace in about 30 minutes when the traffic behaves. Tootbus sells a combined ticket that bundles the coach journey from Paris with the Passport, which suits anyone who would rather not change trains. The old Versailles Express service from the Eiffel Tower no longer appears on the estate’s own transport page, so use the palace’s shuttle and bus information rather than searching for it.

Driving to Versailles is easy and parking is the part to plan. From the A13, take exit 5 for Versailles Centre and follow the signs. The Place d’Armes car park sits directly in front of the palace, takes cars and coaches and is open 24 hours, and there are further car parks inside the Park at the Grand Canal, the Petit Trianon, the Grand Trianon and the Queen’s Hamlet.

You can also drive into the Park itself through the Queen’s Gate without booking anything, for €12 (about $13, £10) per vehicle. Vehicle access runs from 9am, with last admission at 5.50pm in high season and 4.50pm in low season. Parking and admission are free for visitors with proof of disability, and the Neptune Gate car park is reserved for them.

If you would rather not drive your own car down, compare hire rates through DiscoverCars, and if you are coming from further afield in Europe, check trains and coaches across the continent before you commit to the road.

How much does the palace of Versailles cost?

The Passport costs €35 (about $38, £30) and is the only ticket that covers the whole estate. Everything else is a subset. These were the prices on the palace’s own ticketing pages at the time of writing.

Four rules sit behind that table.

• Every Palace visitor must book a time slot, including visitors who get in free. Entry within half an hour of your slot is only guaranteed on tickets bought online.
• Admission to the Palace and the Trianon estate is free for under-18s and for under-26s resident in the EU, and free for disabled visitors and a companion. A slot still has to be booked.
• Guided tours cost extra, from €10 to €16 on top of admission at full price and €7 to €10 reduced, and they get you into rooms that are otherwise closed. Under-10s go free.
• Several parts of the estate cost nothing: the Park all year, the Gallery of Coaches, the Sculptures and Mouldings Gallery and the Royal Tennis Court, and the gardens on every day without a fountain show.

Prices change with the season and with what is on, so check the ticket section on the Palace of Versailles website before you buy.

Versailles opening days and times

Versailles runs on two seasons and the difference is an hour at the end of the day. High season runs from 1 April to 31 October, low season from 1 November to 31 March, and the Palace and Trianon estate close on Mondays all year.

The Palace, the Trianon estate and the ticket offices close every Monday, and on 25 December, 1 January and 1 May. The gardens and Park stay open daily. Two seasonal quirks are worth knowing: the gardens shut early, at 5.30pm, on Saturdays through the summer show season and on 14 July, and some groves are closed in low season. The Gallery of Coaches and the Sculptures and Mouldings Gallery open only at weekends and on French bank holidays.

Times move with the programme, so check the palace’s own opening hours the week you travel.

Getting around at Versailles

The estate is walkable end to end, and there are four alternatives if you would rather not. The Palace to the Trianon estate is about 30 minutes on foot, and the gardens between them are the walk most people enjoy most.

• The little train loops between the Palace, the Grand Canal and the Trianon palaces and takes about 20 minutes to cross the estate.
• Electric vehicles cover the same ground on your own schedule.
• Bicycles can be hired on site, as Audrey from That Backpacker did, and there are bicycle parks around the estate.
• Golf carts and segways are also available for hire.

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