The Palace of Versailles History

At first le Chateau de Versailles was a modest country house built by Louis XIII. The king used to go hunting and resting to this place.
When his son Louis XIV become king he started to look for a place to live, tired of being in different places like the Louvre or the Royal Palace. When he met this place he decided to set there and he invested more than half of the country incomes of a whole year to turn this humble house into a royalty palace.
During the reign of Luois XV and Louis XVI the palace suffered some changes that affected its majesty.
After the French Revolution, the palace was looted and could be barely used, only in some special occasions like the coronation of the German emperor in 1871 or the sign of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.

Nowadays Versailles is a national palace that welcomes other countries presidents. More than 900 hundred persons work in this public establishment, 400 of them are only for watchfulness. Three million people visit the palace per year and seven million admire the gardens (70% of them are foreign tourists).
The Versailles is made out of three palaces: Versailles, Great Trianon and Small Trianon. There are also many small building located in the village.
There are 700 smallholdings, 2513 windows, 352 fireplaces (1252 during the Ancien Régime) or 13 hectare of fireplaces, 67 stairs and 483 mirrors (divided into the Great Gallery, War Saloon and the Piece Saloon). The total area is 67.121 m2, 50.000 of them are open to the public.
The park have 800 hectare, 300 of them are bushes and 2 are French gardens: The small park which has 80 hectare and the Trianon with 50 hectare. It has 20 km2 of fences and 42 km2 of walks with 372 statues.