The Palace of Versailles is
a royal château in Versailles in the Île-de-France region of
France. In French it is the Château de Versailles. When the
château was built, Versailles was a country village; today,
however, it is a suburb of Paris, some 20 kilometres southwest of
the French capital. The court of Versailles was the centre of
political power in France from 1682, when Louis XIV moved from
Paris, until the royal family was forced to return to the capital
in October 1789 after the beginning of the French Revolution.
Versailles is therefore famous not only as a building, but as a
symbol of the system of absolute monarchy of the Ancien Régime.
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