A brazen robbery at the Palace of Versailles in France foiled this weekend. According to a report published in Le Figaro, a 31-year-old boy climbed the perimeter wall of the castle grounds and entered the historic layout through a damaged courtyard door.
According to the Versailles Prosecutor’s Office, the guy arrived by taxi to the castle park around 10:30 p. m. Saturday night. Police were alerted shortly after the risk through the taxi driver, who described the guy as “dressed in a sheet and pretending to be a king. “
The spokesman for the Palace of Versailles said in a statement that neither the furniture nor the collections suffered any damage during the intrusion. “He’s a guy who left Paris for Versailles and would have told the driving force of the taxi that he intended to enter the castle,” he told Agence France-Presse. “It was intercepted after breaking a window near a front door that gives access to the lower gallery.
The palace reopened to the public in May when France calmed down cautiously with its covid-19 closing measures. The site, which also includes the Trianon estate, the Versailles gardens and the bus gallery and park, is one of the most popular tourist sites in the country, attracting around 8 million visitors in 2019. Today, visitors must purchase an access ticket at a scheduled price in advance and abide by the now popular sanitary precautions.
Built in the late 17th century through the “King Sun” Louis XIV, the 2,300-room complex separated the royal court and the circle of relatives until the overthrow of the monarchy in 1789. In 1837, Louis-Philippe, then ruler of France, dissolved Versailles’ prestige as a royal apartment and inaugurated the design as a museum committed to the “glories of France”. The palace’s collections house more than 60,000 paintings and designs spanning medieval times until the early 20th century.