Versailles: On Your Own, Guided, or With Giverny

The RER on your own, a private half day, or Versailles and Giverny together

The Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles

Versailles is 45 minutes from central Paris and the easiest day trip to do without us. It is also the one where a guide changes the day most, because the palace admits several million people a year through the same front gate and the difference between a good visit and a bad one is timing. Here are the three ways to do it and who each one suits.

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On your own by RER

Take RER C to Versailles Château Rive Gauche, walk ten minutes to the palace, and join the security line. Book a timed ticket on the palace website before you go; the line without one can run past an hour in summer. Go on a weekday, arrive for the first entry at 9:00 a.m., and do the palace first and the gardens after lunch. The palace is closed on Mondays. Cost: the train fare and the ticket. This is the right choice for a couple on a budget, a second visit, or anyone content to read the audio guide and wander.

A private half day with a guide

The Private Versailles Trip sends a driver and a Mercedes van to your Paris hotel, morning or afternoon, and a licensed guide who walks you through the State Apartments, the Hall of Mirrors, and the gardens with priority entry. Four and a half hours door to door. $1,415 for two people and $67 for each additional person up to six. Golf carts for the gardens on request. Runs daily except Mondays, January 1, and December 25.

The guide is the point. Versailles has no labels to speak of, the audio guide covers the rooms in order, and the crowd moves as a single slow body through the King’s Apartments. A guide takes you against the flow, tells you which room mattered and why, and gets you into the gardens while the coaches are still in the palace. For a first visit with children or with anyone who tires in crowds, the private half day is the version that works.

Versailles and Giverny in one day

The Private Versailles and Giverny Day Trip does the palace in the morning with priority admission and an audio guide, then drives an hour north to Monet’s house and gardens at Giverny for the afternoon: the water-lily pond, the Japanese bridge, the studio. Eight hours from your hotel and back. $1,975 for up to four people. Lunch is on your own between the two. Giverny is open from April through October and closed from November 1 to April 30, so the combination is a spring-to-autumn day. A private guide inside the palace and a three-course lunch can be added.

The pairing works because the two sit on the same side of Paris and because they are opposites: Louis XIV’s geometry in the morning, Monet’s tangle in the afternoon. It is the day for a first-time visitor with one free day and no interest in a 13-hour train tour.

Timing the crowd

Tuesday is the busiest day after Sunday, because the Louvre is closed and its visitors go to Versailles instead.
The gardens are free except on fountain-show days from spring through autumn, when the fountains run and a garden ticket applies.
The first hour after opening and the last two before closing are the quiet ones inside the palace.
Marie Antoinette’s estate at the far end of the park is a 25-minute walk or a ride on the little train. On a half day, choose it or the gardens, not both.

The other palaces

If you have seen Versailles or want smaller crowds, the Vaux-le-Vicomte and Fontainebleau day pairs the château that inspired Versailles with the palace where Napoleon abdicated, by private van with skip-the-line entry, at $495 per person for four. Both are an hour south of Paris and neither has Versailles’ line.

For fitting Versailles into a week with a Normandy or Champagne day, see day trips in a Paris week.

Questions

Is Versailles open on Mondays?

No. The palace is closed on Mondays. Giverny is open daily from April through October and closed November 1 to April 30.

Do I need a guide for Versailles?

Not to get in. A guide helps most on a first visit, with children, or in high season, when the rooms are full and the order of the audio guide is the order of the crowd.