Palace of Versailles, former French royal residence and centre of government, now a national landmark. It is located in the city of Versailles, Yvelines département, Île-de-France région, northern France, 16 km west-southwest of Paris. As the centre of the French court, Versailles was one of the grandest theatres of European absolutism.
When the château was built, Versailles was a country village; today, however, it is a wealthy suburb of Paris, some 20 kilometres southwest of the French capital. The court of Versailles was the center of political power in France from 1682, when Louis XIV moved from Paris, until the royal family was forced to return to the capital in October 1789 after the beginning of the French Revolution. Versailles is therefore famous not only as a building, but as a symbol of the system of absolute monarchy of the Ancien Régime.
UNESCO designated the palace and its gardens a World Heritage site in 1979. Following a devastating winter storm in 1989, which destroyed more than 1,000 trees on the palace grounds, the French government initiated a wide-ranging project of repair and renovation. A severe windstorm in 1999 caused the loss of some 10,000 trees, including several planted by Marie Antoinette and Napoleon Bonaparte. The chateau was also damaged. In the late 1990s some nine million people visited the palace annually.
The Fifth Republic has enthusiastically promoted the museum as one of France's foremost tourist attractions (Opperman, 2004). The palace, however, still serves political functions. Heads of state are regaled in the Hall of Mirrors; the Sénat and the Assemblée nationale meet in congress in Versailles to revise or otherwise amend the French Constitution, a tradition that came into effect with the promulgation of the 1875 Constitution. Public establishment of the museum and Château de Versailles Spectacles recently organised the Jeff Koons Versailles exhibition.
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