French
Deutsch
Yvelines is in Île de France.
Cities
[edit | edit source]
- 1 Maisons-Laffitte — equestrian paradise and home to a beautiful garden city.
- 2 Montfort l'Amaury — voted one of France's best villages.
- 3 Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines — conurbation of Elancourt, Trappes, Montigny-le-Bretonneux, Guyancourt, Plaisir, Voisins-le-Bretonneux, Magny-les-Hameaux, La Verrière, Bois d'Arcy, Maurepas and Coignières. Tourists will come for France Miniature, for outdoor sports or the Haute Vallée de Chevreuse National Park; it also has an impressive array of modern and postmodern architecture.
- 4 Rambouillet — former royal and presidential residence with castle and beautiful expansive grounds.
- 5 Saint-Germain-en-Laye — a lively suburb 30 minutes west of Paris on the RER, it is best known for its Renaissance château. Also Poissy.
- 6 Versailles — 30 minutes west of Paris on the train, and above all prized for Louis XIV's incomparable château, which set the gold-standard for palace-dwellers the world over, and still continues to thrill, enchant and, depending on the crowds, exasperate millions of travellers to this day. Don't miss the majestic formal gardens and estate, Marie Antoinette's "summer house", which is really another palace in its own right, and the city of Versailles itself, which retains a smugly aristocratic elegance two centuries after its last king and queen lost their throne (and their heads).
