Glimmers of gold were visible from the crêperie terrasse. A fixed menu, including a sweet and savoury crêpe and a drink costs under €20 at Crêperie La Place. From here (admittedly through trees and past several parked cars), you can see one of France’s most famous monuments, the Château of Versailles.
Handsome, golden-pastry-coloured buildings, tree-lined boulevards and not a splodge of old chewing gum, cigarette butts or overflowing dustbins in sight, Versailles is like a scaled-down Paris that got a thorough scrub from a pressure washer. It looks like the Paris seen on the silver screen, almost too aesthetic. Some 10 million visitors come to see the palace – the former seat of French royalty – each year. However, most of these are on a day trip from Paris, and miss the rest of the town entirely.
I was one of them. When I first lived in France aged 20, au pairing for a Parisian family, we’d visit the château most weekends. I didn’t know anything about the town around it.
The town grew around the château, a royal hunting lodge transformed by Louis XIV in the 17th century into the home of French royalty. Planned in grid formation – largely for courtiers and staff of the palace – Versailles now has a population of more than 85,000 who enjoy plenty of great restaurants, bars and attractions, which remain surprisingly uncrowded.
As the Château of Versailles gears up to host all things equestrian at the Olympic Games (dressage and showjumping), it’s apt that the most impressive sight after the palace is the royal stables. La Grand Écurie (the big stable), directly opposite, is an elaborate semi-circle reminiscent of Bath’s Royal Crescent.
Inside the vaulted hall, a collection of painted wooden carriages could take a hundred Cinderellas to the ball. For most of the year, it’s only open to the public on weekend afternoons, with the exception of July, August and September, when it opens daily except Mondays. La Petite Écurie (the little stable), just across the road, has been turned into a sculpture gallery, open weekend afternoons between May and October. Entry to both is free.
A five-minute walk along the tree-lined Boulevard de la Reine, brings you to the 18th-century mansion Musée Lambinet (entry €7, closed Mon-Tues). A legacy gift from its previous owner to the town of Versailles, it opened as a museum in 1932. The collection has a suite of rooms which recreate a bourgeois, 18th-century home, and artefacts that illustrate the history of Versailles between the 17th and 20th centuries.
The collection of clocks, harps and chests of drawers is as glossy as interiors at the Chateau, but here there’s plenty of history on the lesser-known parts of the French Revolution, including the Women’s March against the high price of bread.
Ale would have been the drink of the poor in Louis XIV’s time, but La Brasserie du Roi serves drinks fit for a king. It runs brewing workshops, but since you’ll need to come back two weeks later to bottle, its 90-minute tastings on Thursday evenings are best for visitors. On other nights of the week, sample its beers in the restaurant, La Ménagerie du Roi, which serves award-winning burgers to soak up the excesses.
Perhaps the only thing in Versailles that doesn’t look straight out of a period drama is the street art. Like Paris, Versailles has attracted some of the country’s most famous street artists. Invader’s pixelated mosaics pop up among wrought iron balconies and shuttered windows. Bollards have been transformed into Lego-like depictions of French revolutionaries by CyKlop. OpenStreetMap has a helpful map of the different works, or you can book onto a guided tour organised by the Versailles Tourism Office.
It may not have the quantity of hotels of Paris, but Versaille does have plenty of variety, making it easy to linger here for longer than a day trip. Newly opened as part of a planned eco-town at the foot of Versailles park, is Café-Hotel le Bout du Parc. Pine wood rooms and chalets are light and airy, and there’s a fantastic roof terrace. The area is still under construction and the service has had some teething problems, but it’s one to watch. Dorm beds cost €26 (£22) while private doubles start at €116 (£98).
At the other end of the price scale, the Michelin guide awarded three of its prestigious new “keys” to Airelles Château de Versailles, one of only 24 hotels in the country to receive the honour. There are still rooms available for some of the Olympics dates but they’ll set you back €2,700 (£2,281) a night. With an Alain Ducasse restaurant on site, this is very much a place to appreciate the grandeur of Versailles’ history. But to get the best of this town, wander down its tree-lined boulevards and relax with the locals.