The Château de Versailles —or simply Versailles— is a royal château, outside the gates of which the village of Versailles, France, has grown to become a full-fledged city. From 1682, when King Louis XIV moved from Paris, until the royal family was forced to return to the capital in 1789, the court of Versailles was the centre of power under the Ancien Régime. In 1660, Louis XIV, who was approaching majority and the assumption of full royal powers from the advisors who had governed France during his minority, was casting about for a site near Paris but away from the tumults and diseases of the crowded city. He had grown up in the disorders of the civil war between rival factions of aristocrats called the Frondes and wanted a site where he could organize and completely control a government of France by absolute personal rule. He settled on the royal hunting lodge at Versailles and decided to convert it into a palace.

In 1661 Louis Le Vau made some additions which he developed further in 1668. In 1678 Mansart took over the work, the Galerie des Glaces, the chapel and the two wings being due to him. On May 6, 1682 Louis XIV took up residence in the château. Furnishings had been plundered from Louis' disgraced finance minister's Nicolas Fouquet splendid house at Vaux-le-Vicomte, whose grand success there was his undoing.

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