Excursions and Tourist Visit : Giverny and Versailles

Discover Giverny

Meet your driver and your guide for full day tour of Giverny and Versailles

Impressionist master Claude Monet lived and worked in Giverny for 43 extremely creative years. Explore his home, his studio and the wonderfully uninhibited gardens he created and painted. Monet selected plants and trees for their colors and shapes, placed exotic and common flowers together and planted roses and flowering vines. He encouraged everything to grow with abandon.

Ten years after Monet settled in Giverny, he purchased land next to his property. Inspired by his collection of Japanese prints, Monet created a water garden there. He had a pond built, diverted a river for water, built graceful bridges and planted bamboo, willows, wisteria and his famous water lilies .

The gardens were a constant source of pleasure and artistic inspiration for Monet. Gardeners visit Giverny to study his landscaping and planting techniques. Botanists discover new plants. Art lovers recognize the sources of their favorite paintings.

13:00 : Stop for lunch at Moulin de Fourges after your lunch
14:00 : Your driver and your guide will drive you for your visit of Château de Versailles.

Visit of Château de Versailles

Château de Versailles

A believer in the divine right of kings, Louis XIV wanted to move the court away from Paris to establish a centralized government that he would be able to control as an absolute monarch.

In 1661, the king hired architect Louis Le Vau, landscape architect André Le Nôtre, and painter-decorator Charles Le Brun. He ordered them to transform a hunting lodge into what became one of the largest and most sumptuous royal palaces in the world.

Louis XIV began moving the court to Versailles in 1678. On May 6, 1682, the court was officially established at the Château de Versailles.

The palace was the home of kings, the center of power in France and the standard of culture for Europe until the French Revolution in 1789.

Location