A Weekend of Chateaux

Two weekends ago, I went to three ex-palaces in one weekend. Here's a brief description of them, and the link to the pictures.

The first was Chateau de Vincennes. Vincennes is where the royal family lived before they moved to the Louvre. It consisted of a giant tower and a whole little village surrounding it. I think it was built sometime around 11 or 1200, but I forget the actual year. We walked up into the tower and got to see all of the original rooms where the king worked, slept, got dressed, etc. It was cool because the rooms were pretty tiny, but tall! They built the tower vertically rather than horizontally.. maybe because the kings used to be tall and skinny? One of the rooms in the tower even had the original woodwork that used to line all of the walls of the building. Now, it's just cement and stones. Also, Vincennes was used to keep prisoners during the Revolution. Some of the walls have etchings and paintings done by the prisoners.

The second chateau I visited was the Louvre. The kings used to live in the Louvre until Louis XIV built Versailles for himself. The cool thing about the Louvre as a building is that every king added on parts of their own. In some hallways you can see the crest or initials of the king that had it built. But the whole building was built in the same style, so all the wings look similar and you can't really tell which ones are new and old. Napoleon (III I think.. I forget) was the last king to live at the Louvre, before it was converted into a school for artists and then a musuem.

The third chateau I visited was Versailles, which, of course, is the grand palace built by Louis XIV. I did't actually go into the chateau because the line was super long, and my friends didn't want to pay the extra money (I have a free pass so I can go back anytime). Instead, we walked all around the gardens, and then went into Marie-Antoinette's private house (it didn't have a line). The gardens were pretty huge, and looked nice even though they weren't blooming at all. Marie-Antoinette's 'Domain' was cool because it wasn't super ritzy, just a nice country home with fancy chairs. But she did have her own private garden with lots of paths and lakes. She even had her own village/farm of peasants dedicated to preparing her meals and whatnot!

You can see all the pictures for the chateaux here:

Storming the castles - a weekend of Parisiens chateaux