Notre-Dame Market
You begin where the town of Versailles fed itself and the court. Come in the morning, when the stalls are trading, and look at how the market is still organised around its squares, the “carrés”. That layout is old: by the early 18th century the market already had four specialised squares, one for veal and poultry, one for butter and seafood together with oats and grain, one for “herbs”, meaning fruit and vegetables, and one for weighing flour, first called the Poids-du-Roi. Inside that flour hall was a room where traders' weights and measures were checked.
The market is older than the palace you will see later. In November 1634, prompted by Martial de Loménie, Louis XIII set up a weekly Tuesday market here, probably replacing an even older one, with three fairs a year in May, August and October. From 1671 Louis XIV expanded it to keep his young “Ville Neuve” supplied, and in 1725 the market was redesigned, with Louis Blouin building the flour hall.
It was never a quiet place. A local chronicler described the square as the usual meeting point of small traders, workers and plenty of idlers, and the stage for many disturbances. On 22 August 1740, in the middle of a wheat shortage, bakers from Paris came to buy up flour and the people of Versailles protested violently; afterwards a permanent police force of Swiss Guards was posted here. After the Revolution the market fell into decay, and in 1835 the town bought it, ending its life as royal property. For a long time the square also served as a place of public executions.
Buy something for later if you like; entry costs nothing. Then comes the longest leg of the day: 2190 m and about 30 minutes to Petit Trianon, from the bourgeois town into the royal park.
