The Gardens of Versailles in Autumn

During the two years I’ve lived near the Versailles gardens, can you believe I’ve never seen the fountains when they’re turned on? You see, there are lots of Baroque fountains and groves peppered throughout the massive gardens, but since they’re so old, they can’t be running water constantly. So every weekend (excluding weekends in winter), all the fountains turn on and the entire garden is filled with the sounds of water and Baroque music. It really adds to the ambiance – which is impressive, considering the gardens already have a ton of ambiance to begin with.

My friend Katie had two free tickets to see the fountains, so we ended up going on the very last fountain weekend of the year. We also happened to catch the trees in their deep autumn state as the sun was setting. Everything I looked at was washed in golden light and surrounded by orange leaves. I’ve seen the garden many times, but that day, it looked extra beautiful.

We were excited to see a few fountains and areas that are normally closed off to the public, hidden behind walls of hedges. Even though I’ve walked through these gardens dozens of times, there’s still so much of it I haven’t discovered. In fact, one of the special fountain areas was the focus of the recent film called A Little Chaos with Kate Winslet.

I’ll let these photos do the rest of the talking!

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There are lots of smaller gardens walled off with tall hedges. This is one of them, called the Queen’s Grove.
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This is part of a terraced wall of the outdoor “Ballroom” featured in the Kate Winslet movie mentioned earlier.

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This was my favorite fountain. The figure spouting water out of his mouth at the center was majestic!
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This is the entrance to the Orangerie, where the fruit trees are stored during the cold months of winter. This is also where the Grand Masked Ball was held.

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This was taken just before the fountains turned on – but at least you can see the newly restored fountain in the foreground. They’ve been restoring that fountain for about two years!

For more information on the Musical Fountains, visit the website.

I'm a Californian in my mid-twenties who studied Art History and lived in France for 3 years. I blog honestly about my travels, share my thoughts on life, and get poetic about art and photography. I also sell prints of my photographs on Etsy.

2 Comments

    1. Reply
      Hannah Wilson Post author

      I feel the same way about the gardens! It’s actually insane how big they are – if you look on a map the gardens are just as big as the entire city of Versailles. Thank you for being supportive of my sporadic blogging! Perhaps this isn’t the place, but I just saw on Instagram that you’re pregnant! Congratulations!

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