Accompanying Persons' Program

A specific optional tours programme has been tailor-made for regularly registered participants and accompanying persons. These visits will be an excellent opportunity to discover some of the most outstanding artistic and historic highlights of Versailles.

Tours brief description and conditions are indicated here below.

To sign up for tours, please tick corresponding boxes on the registration form and send your payment.

Most of the excursions have a limited number of participants. Therefore, we suggest that you fill in the corresponding section on the registration form or on the website as soon as possible. Reservations will be made in order of arrival and on-site availability cannot be guaranteed.

• All tours will be conducted in English.
• All tours depart and return from and to the Palais des Congrès.
• Full day excursions include lunch.
• The organisers reserve the right to cancel tours with less than 15 participants.

HALF DAY TOURS

Walking tour of « Le Quartier Notre-Dame »
V1 Thursday, October 19, 2006 • 02:00 pm - 03:30 pm

In the ancient “New Town” of Louis XIV you will have a pleasant walk through its old cobbled streets or along the stales of its famous food market. Here was invented the “trilogy”: a street crossed by an octagonal square leading to a church, model which has been used in the whole world since. This area of antiquaries and ancient parish of the king, Notre-Dame is still the heart of Versailles.

Price per person: 29 € VAT included
Meeting point: Conference venue.

Walking tour of “Le Quartier Saint Louis”
V2 Thursday, October 19, 2006 • 02:00 pm - 03:30 pm

At the beginning of the XVIIIth century, the “New Town”of Versailles was achieved and could not be extended any more. A second town, completely pulled off from the 1st one, was going to be erected on the spot of the ancient “Parc aux Cerfs” (park of stags) of Louis XIII. Its ground, divided into plots like a draughtboard, spreads itself out around its magnificent cathedral and its picturesque squares.

Price per person: 29 € VAT included
Meeting point: Conference venue.

Walking tour of the Royal Kitchen Garden
V3 Friday, October 20, 2006 • 09:30 am - 11:30 am
V4 Friday, October 20, 2006 • 02:30 pm - 04:30 pm

At the request of Louis XIV, Jean-Baptiste La Quintinie, director of fruits and vegetables gardens for the royal residences, designed the Royal Kitchen Garden in the years 1678 to 1683. The 3 hectares of the great central square is divided into 16 smaller squares radiating out from a pond. At the centre of each of these, and surrounded by espaliertrained fruit trees, are rings of vegetables. From the two terraces, visitors have a ring-side view of the site where the gardeners tend the arrangements of fruits and vegetables. Strolling around you will discover twenty-nine walled gardens and their collections of fruit trees on which the gardeners lavish their expertise. With their remarkable skills in the art of pruning, they train the climbing branches of the trees to grow on espaliers or without support.

Price per person: 29 € VAT included
Meeting point: Conference venue.

Academy of Equestrian Arts
V5 Friday, October 20, 2006 • 10:15 am - 11:45 am

Opposite the Château de Versailles, two buildings remarkable for their rich architectural style and sculpted decor were once the home of the most prestigious cavalry. Now, during the “Matinales des Ecuyers”, visitors can observe dressage sessions and then visit the Foyer Nuno Oliveira and the historic stables.

Price per person: 37 € VAT included
Meeting point: Conference venue

Private Apartments of the Great Palace of Versailles
V6 Friday, October 20, 2006 • 09:30 am - 11:30 am
V7 Friday, October 20, 2006 • 02:30 pm - 04:30 pm

Versailles is composed of thousands rooms. Some of those are restored with the decoration and the furniture of the owners of that time. On your visit to these “Private Apartments” of prestigious and royal persons, you will find yourself indulging in daydreams about past splendors, and incorporating into them your own reveries.

Price per person: 41 € VAT included
Meeting point: Conference venue.

FULL DAY TOURS

Versailles Chateau, its Hamlet and its Trianons
F1 Saturday, October, 21, 2006 • 09:00 am - 04:30 pm

Surrounded by its 950 hectares of parkland, the Château de Versailles is a masterpiece of XVIIth century French art and architecture created at the behest of Louis XIV. Out of the former hunting lodge of his father Louis XIII, the Château was embellished with new apartments, the Hall of Mirrors and the King’s Opera House.

“Constructed of marble and porphyry, with delectable gardens”, the Grand Trianon was a place of relaxation for king and the royal family, away from all the ceremony of Versailles! The Petit Trianon was built in 1760 for Louis XV and Madame de Pompadour, and in Marie-Antoinette’s time it was further embellished with the addition of a landscaped park and the famous Queen’s Hamlet, the Hameau de la Reine. The visit of the Trianons and of the Hamlet will be in the morning; lunch will take place at the restaurant located in the Park. The afternoon will be dedicated to the visit of the main palace and its French former gardens designed by Lenôtre between 1661 and 1700 recognized all over the world as a model of the formal French style garden.

Price per person: 85 € VAT included
Meeting point: Conference venue. Lunch included.
Transportation by Toy train into the Park included and quite a bit of walking.