Palace and Park of Versailles

What began as a hunting lodge transformed into Europe's most dazzling court when the Sun King decided no noble would overshadow him. 30,000 workers labored for decades creating 2,300 rooms, the Hall of Mirrors with its 357 mirrors, and gardens where fountains dance to baroque music. Here Marie Antoinette played at being a shepherdess in her fake village while France burned outside. Versailles is beauty and excess turned to stone.

Versailles represents the pinnacle of 17th-century French art and was the model for European royal residences for over a century. The palace exceptionally documents monarchical absolutism and the evolution of the formal French garden as an art form.