Versailles hotels collection

To people his town, King Louis XIV gave away land, provided houses and buildings were built to his architects' models and kept the roofs below the level of the Marble Court at the palace, so its occupants could look out over them. Avenues fan out from the Place d'Armes like a goose's foot, between stone houses capped with slate. The King's Kitchen Garden still trains its pear trees against walls that give back the day's warmth at night. At the far end of the Pièce d'eau des Suisses in the palace's parkland, stands a copy of a horseman Bernini had carved with the king's features; it displeased him so much that it was made into a Roman hero and banished there, at the end of the gardens.