Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
60 free Palace of Versailles trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Versailles started as a hunting lodge that courtiers called a house of cards and ended up as the seat of an absolute monarchy, a revolutionary flashpoint, a German coronation hall and the room where the First World War was ended on paper. This quiz covers all of it: Fouquet's fatal party, Le Vau's enveloppe, Le Nôtre's axes, Le Brun's ceilings, the 578 mirrors, the silver furniture melted for war, the planets of the State Apartments, the lever and the coucher, and the balcony scene of 6 October 1789. Out in the park there are questions on the Grand Canal and its Venetian gondolas, the Apollo and Latona fountains, the fourteen waterwheels of the Machine de Marly, the Orangerie, the Porcelain Trianon, Marie Antoinette's hamlet and the wooden opera house built for her wedding. The later history covers Louis Philippe's museum, Rockefeller's cheque, the 1999 storm, the 2024 Olympics and why the French Parliament still meets there. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the palace, the Hall of Mirrors, the gardens and the individual buildings and events, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question. For the man who built it, try our Louis XIV quiz.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Palace of Versailles lies roughly how far south-west of Paris?
About 16 km
The Avenue de Paris runs 27 km from the capital straight to the gate between the two royal stables.
Q 02Which king built the original hunting lodge at Versailles in 1623?
Louis XIII
Courtiers mocked the brick-and-stone lodge as the 'puny château' and the 'house of cards'.
Q 03On what date did the king, court and government move permanently to Versailles?
6 May 1682
They stayed until 6 October 1789, apart from the Regency years after Louis XIV's death.
Q 04Roughly how many rooms does the palace contain?
About 2,300
Around 1,000 of them belong to the Museum of the History of France.
Q 05Whose lavish 1661 fête at Vaux-le-Vicomte impressed Louis XIV yet got its host imprisoned?
Nicolas Fouquet
The king promptly hired the château's architect, gardener and painter for his own project.
Q 06Who designed the gardens of Versailles?
André Le Nôtre
He also laid out the Tuileries vista that became the Champs-Élysées.
Q 07Which painter directed the palace's interior decoration and frescoed the Hall of Mirrors ceiling?
Charles Le Brun
His 30 ceiling scenes celebrate the first 18 years of Louis XIV's personal rule, 17 of them victories over the Dutch.
Q 08Which architect built the Hall of Mirrors and the great north and south wings from 1678?
Hardouin-Mansart
He took over as First Architect after the Franco-Dutch War, with a workforce of former soldiers.
Q 09What was the 'enveloppe' built between 1668 and 1671?
A new façade wrapped around the old château
Colbert called the resulting mix of old brick and new stone a 'patchwork'.
Q 10How many mirrors line the Hall of Mirrors?
578
They face 17 windows and were the first big order for Colbert's new French glassworks.
Q 11How long is the Hall of Mirrors?
73 metres
It was built on the site of a garden terrace between the king's and queen's suites.
Q 12What happened to the Hall of Mirrors' famous solid silver furniture?
Melted down to pay for a war
The eight-foot silver throne in the throne room went the same way.
Q 13The mirrors broke the European monopoly on mirror-making held by which city?
Venice
The royal glass factory that made them grew into Saint-Gobain, still one of the world's biggest glassmakers.
Q 21What triggered the Women's March on Versailles in October 1789?
The high price and scarcity of bread
Reports of royal guards trampling the tricolour cockade at a banquet poured fuel on the fire.
Q 22Which unit's welcoming banquet on 1 October 1789 was reported as a 'gluttonous orgy' and inflamed Paris?
The Flanders Regiment
Officers were said to have stamped on the tricolour cockade and sworn allegiance to the Bourbon white.
Q 23What did the revolutionary Convention do with the palace's furniture and art in 1793–94?
Sold it at auction in 17,000 lots
Q 14The rooms of the king's State Apartment were each dedicated to what?
A planet and its Roman god
Mercury held the state bedchamber and Mars the guards' room.
Q 15Which State Apartment room served as Louis XIV's throne room?
Apollo
The sun god's chariot was the king's favourite emblem; the ceiling shows it pulled by four horses.
Q 16What did Louis XIV use the Salon of Diana for?
Billiards
Courtiers watched him play from galleries; a celebrated Italian bust of the king is displayed there.
Q 17Which sculptor's bust of Louis XIV, made during his 1665 visit to France, stands in the Salon of Diana?
Bernini
The Italian master was invited to redesign the Louvre, but only the bust survived the trip.
Q 18What was the Ambassadors' Staircase, demolished by Louis XV in 1752?
The palace's grand entrance stair
It was famously lit by a skylight to overawe visitors after a cramped, dark vestibule.
Q 19Which two daily ceremonies in the royal bedroom were watched by crowds of courtiers?
The lever and the coucher
Louis XIV also dined alone at a table before the fireplace while courtiers watched him eat.
Q 20From the balcony of which room did Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette face the crowd on 6 October 1789?
The king's bedchamber
Lafayette stood with them; the family was forced to Paris that day and never returned.
The museum has spent enormous sums since the 1950s buying pieces back on the international market.
Q 24Which king turned Versailles into a museum dedicated to 'all the glories of France' in the 1830s?
Louis Philippe I
Its showpiece is the Gallery of Battles running most of the south wing's length.
Q 25Which famous canvas hangs in the palace's Coronation Room?
David's painting of Napoleon
Louis Philippe kept the room's original volume while gutting most other apartments for galleries.
Q 26What was proclaimed in the Hall of Mirrors on 18 January 1871?
The German Empire
Prussian troops occupied the palace during the Franco-Prussian War and used parts of it as a hospital.
Q 27Which peace settlement of 28 June 1919 was signed in the Hall of Mirrors?
The Treaty of Versailles
The date was the fifth anniversary of Franz Ferdinand's assassination; the setting avenged 1871.
Q 28Which American philanthropist gave over $2 million in the 1920s to restore the palace?
John D. Rockefeller Jr.
That was worth about $38 million in 2024 money; his foundation gave again after World War II.
Q 29Since 1875, the French Parliament meets in joint session at Versailles to do what?
Amend the Constitution
It did so in March 2024 to enshrine the freedom to have an abortion.
Q 30Which storm felled more than 10,000 trees in the gardens on 26 December 1999?
Cyclone Lothar
The 'Grand Versailles' project began by replanting the gardens.