The gardens of Versailles are the definitive example of the French formal garden style — a rigorously geometric composition of parterres, basins, groves and axial vistas that André Le Nôtre laid out for Louis XIV between 1661 and 1687. They are not so much a garden as a diagram of absolute monarchy, in which every hedge, path and jet of water is subordinated to a single central axis that runs from the King's bedchamber, through the Palace, down the length of the gardens and out to infinity along the Grand Canal.
The domain is arranged in two clear parts. The formal gardens nearest the Palace — the parterres, the fountain basins and the bosquets (hidden grove-rooms) — cover about 100 hectares and are the setting for the Musical Fountains and Musical Gardens. Beyond them lie 700 hectares of the park proper, containing the Grand Canal, the woodland, and, at the far north-western corner, the Trianon Estate — Louis XIV's Grand Trianon, Louis XV's Petit Trianon and Marie-Antoinette's Hamlet.
When Louis XIV built the fountains there was not enough water on the Versailles plateau to supply them for more than an hour, and not enough pressure to spray them at all. The Machine de Marly — a monstrous 1684 pump system on the Seine 15 km away, using fourteen waterwheels and 250 workmen — was built to solve the problem. It survived until 1817.
The Musical Fountains Show today powers 55 historic basins in choreographed sequence to seventeenth-century music. It runs on Tuesdays, Saturdays and Sundays between April and October, with the finale — the Neptune Basin — at 17:20.
Built 1687 · Hardouin-Mansart
Louis XIV's private retreat from the etiquette of the main Palace, built in pink Languedoc marble over the summer of 1687. Napoleon later restored it as an Imperial residence. Its one long colonnade, the Peristyle, faces the gardens.
Built 1783 · Richard Mique
Twelve rustic cottages, a working farm, a dairy and a mill built for Marie-Antoinette to escape the formality of court. A pointed reaction against the geometry of Le Nôtre — the paths deliberately meander; the roofs are thatched. Restored in 2018 by the Dior fashion house.
Built 1762–68 · Ange-Jacques Gabriel
Louis XV's neoclassical pavilion for Madame de Pompadour (who died before it was finished) and later given by Louis XVI to Marie-Antoinette as her personal domain. It has a rare contemporary interior — most Palace interiors are heavily restored, but the Petit Trianon largely survived.