Versailles in 2 days, on foot

This 2-day self-guided walking plan for Versailles covers 15 narrated sights in an easy day-by-day order. Each day is split into a morning and an afternoon loop, and every stop has a two to three minute audio story in the Gingerguide app.

You set the pace: this is a suggested order, not a schedule. Walk it in 2 days, or stretch it out. Reorder freely; Versailles rewards a detour.

The Versailles route at a glance

Day 1

Day 1 covers 8 stops over about 2.6 km as the crow flies, from Royal Opera to Hall of Mirrors. ≈ 2.6 km between stops, straight line

Morning

1. Royal Opera: Knock the marble columns and they sound hollow: this jewel-box theatre is almost entirely painted wood, thrown up in under two years for Marie-Antoinette's wedding. 0.2 km to the next stop
2. Place d'Armes and Royal Gate: Three grand avenues fan toward a wall of black and gold ironwork, guarded by a bronze Sun King who, oddly, never lived to see either the gate or the statue. 0.5 km to the next stop
3. Notre-Dame Church and Market: A classical church where the royal family's births and deaths were entered in the registers, standing beside four covered market halls that have fed Versailles for generations. 0.4 km to the next stop
4. The Great Stables: A stable grand enough to rival the palace it faces, built for the king's horses and pages, and now home to gilded state coaches and a living riding academy. 0.7 km to the next stop

Afternoon

1. Saint-Louis Cathedral: Two onion-domed towers and a soaring cupola mark the parish church that Napoleon's new diocese raised to cathedral status in 1802, generations after its first stone was laid. 0.3 km to the next stop
2. The Royal Tennis Court: A plain royal tennis court where, on a June afternoon in 1789, breathless deputies crowded in and swore not to separate until France had a written constitution. 0.4 km to the next stop
3. The Orangerie: A building disguised as a garden: thick south-facing walls store the sun and keep more than a thousand potted orange and lemon trees frost-free through winter, without a furnace. 0.1 km to the next stop
4. Hall of Mirrors: Seventeen mirrored arches face seventeen windows so daylight lands twice, in a gallery where Germany once crowned a Kaiser and the treaty ending World War I was signed.

Day 2

Day 2 covers 7 stops over about 2.6 km as the crow flies, from Palace of Versailles to The Queen's Hamlet. ≈ 2.6 km between stops, straight line

Morning

1. Palace of Versailles: Beneath a palace of some 2,300 rooms hides a stubborn secret: the small hunting château Louis XIV's father built, which the Sun King wrapped up rather than tear down. 0.1 km to the next stop
2. Royal Chapel: A chapel that looks like a Gothic cathedral until your eye hits its Corinthian columns, where Louis XIV worshipped from a private balcony and Marie-Antoinette was married. 0.8 km to the next stop
3. The Apollo Fountain and the Grand Canal: Apollo drives his four horses up out of the water where the great axis meets a cross-shaped canal a kilometre and a half long, once the king's private lake. 0.2 km to the next stop
4. The Gardens of Versailles: A vast formal garden ruled by one dead-straight axis, where embroidered hedges, shaded groves and around fifty fountains were fed by water hauled uphill to a site with no river. 0.8 km to the next stop

Afternoon

1. The Grand Trianon: A low, single-storey palace of rose-pink marble, built so a tired Sun King could escape his own court, with an open colonnade you can stroll straight through to the gardens. 0.4 km to the next stop
2. The Petit Trianon: A sober neoclassical cube built for Louis XV and his mistresses, not for Marie-Antoinette, who received it only in 1774 and remade its gardens entirely into her own. 0.4 km to the next stop
3. The Queen's Hamlet: A dozen artfully weathered cottages set around a pond, built brand-new for Marie-Antoinette, and, despite the caricature, a real working farm whose produce reached the royal table.

Distances are straight-line between stops; streets add a little.

Where the route eats

Food and market stops on the Versailles tour, each with its own story in the app:

• Notre-Dame Church and Market: A classical church where the royal family's births and deaths were entered in the registers, standing beside four covered market halls that have fed Versailles for generations.

Updated: September 4, 2026

Full Versailles guide and all stops →