Le Château de Versailles is a massive palace located outside Paris that was home to the royal French court under King Louis XIV. The sprawling 2,000 acre grounds include 12 miles of roads and over 200,000 trees, with the palace itself containing over 700 rooms, 67 staircases, and housing thousands of paintings, sculptures, and other artworks and furnishings. Louis XIV moved the French royal court and government to Versailles in order to exert more control over the nobility and distance himself from the populace in Paris, requiring members of the nobility to reside at the palace for parts of the year and adhere to its strict rules of etiquette.
