Versailles is around forty minutes from central Paris on the RER C, which makes the journey the easy part and the estate the hard part. It is far larger than most people expect: the palace, a garden of several square kilometres, two smaller palaces and a model farming village, all covered by the plan below. Give it the whole day, not a morning.
Is it worth a day trip?
Yes, if you are interested in the estate rather than only the Hall of Mirrors. The palace interior takes about two hours and is busy from the moment it opens; the Trianon estate and the gardens beyond it are where the day becomes pleasant, and most visitors never get that far.
Skip it if you have three days in Paris and have not yet seen the Louvre or the Musée d'Orsay: Versailles costs a full day you are then not spending in Paris. Skip it too if crowds in enclosed spaces are difficult, because the State Apartments are among the busiest indoor spaces in France. Our arithmetic for that call is in how far is too far for a day trip.
The palace and the Trianon estate close on Mondays and a few public holidays, so check the calendar first. If you would rather see the gardens than the interiors, look at the Musical Fountains and Musical Gardens dates in season, when the fountains play to music and the gardens carry their own charge.
Getting there
Three railways go to Versailles and they arrive in three different places. The RER C runs to Versailles Château Rive Gauche, about ten minutes' walk from the palace gates, which is why most people take it. Trains leave from central Paris stations including Saint-Michel Notre-Dame, Musée d'Orsay, Invalides and Champ de Mars, and the ride takes roughly thirty-five to forty-five minutes.
The alternatives are Transilien services: Paris Saint-Lazare to Versailles Rive Droite, and Paris Montparnasse to Versailles Chantiers. Both stations are around twenty minutes' walk from the palace, so take them only if one of those termini suits you. All three use ordinary Île-de-France transport tickets from station machines or the transport app; a standard metro ticket does not cover the journey, so buy for the right zone. Palace tickets are separate, from the estate's own ticketing site.
The day, hour by hour
09:00 Château de Versailles. Take an early slot: the State Apartments fill quickly and stay full. The route runs through the King's and Queen's apartments to the Hall of Mirrors, seventeen arches of glass facing seventeen windows onto the gardens, where the treaty ending the First World War was signed. Allow two hours and take the audio guide, normally included.
11:00 The gardens. Out of the palace and down the steps to the Latona fountain, then along the Green Carpet to the Apollo basin and the head of the Grand Canal. André Le Nôtre laid this out as geometry first and planting second, so the views back towards the palace are the point.
12:30 Grand Trianon. Half an hour on foot north-west along the canal, or take the little road train, hire a bike, or use an electric cart. Louis XIV built this low pink marble palace as an escape from his own court, and the scale after the château is a relief: single storey, colonnaded, opening onto its own flower gardens. The Trianon estate normally opens from midday, hence the afternoon.
13:30 Petit Trianon. A short walk on, a small neoclassical box built for Louis XV and later given to Marie-Antoinette, who ran it as private territory where court etiquette did not apply. The English garden around it, with its temple and grotto, was laid out deliberately against the formality to the east.
14:30 Hameau de la Reine. Behind the Petit Trianon, around a lake, stands the Queen's Hamlet: a dozen thatched cottages, a mill, a dairy and a working farm, built in the 1780s in the style of a Norman village. Food was genuinely produced here, but it was also a stage set for a court that wanted to play at rural life.
16:00 Place du Marché Notre-Dame. Walk into the town, about twenty-five minutes, to the square that has held Versailles' market since the eighteenth century. Four covered halls surround an open square where the outdoor stalls set up on market mornings, so the afternoon is the quiet version: cheese, charcuterie and wine in the halls, cafés around the edges.
17:30 Versailles Château Rive Gauche. Ten minutes' walk from the square and you are back on the RER C. Trains into Paris run frequently all evening.
What to book ahead
The palace, and only the palace. Every visitor needs a timed slot booked online in advance, including Paris Museum Pass holders, who still reserve a free one. Buy from the estate's own ticketing site rather than a reseller, and pick the Passport if you intend to do the Trianon estate, since it covers everything on one ticket.
Open this day trip in Tralendr
The route is saved as a plan, with the palace, the gardens, both Trianons, the Hamlet, the market and the station pinned on a map in the order you walk them. That matters at Versailles more than most places, because the distances between the buildings are genuinely long.
Open the Versailles day trip plan. It opens in a browser without an account and you can change it: drop the Grand Trianon, add the fountain show timings, or move the market to the morning. Share the link and everyone you are going with sees the same map.
Planning the wider trip? Start with how to plan a day trip, or browse all our day trips.