Tourists Evacuated from Palace of Versailles as Fire Breaks Out in Roof

A fire has bro­ken out at the icon­ic Palace of Ver­sailles in France, caus­ing the evac­u­a­tion of tourists from the 17th-cen­tu­ry chateau. Footage shared on social media showed trails of white smoke emerg­ing from the palace’s roof, prompt­ing a swift response from the emer­gency services.

Fire­fight­ers were quick­ly able to extin­guish the blaze, and a palace spokesper­son con­firmed that there was no dam­age to the build­ing’s col­lec­tion. The inci­dent was “quick­ly brought under con­trol,” and the cas­tle and gar­dens were reopened to the pub­lic soon after.

The Palace of Ver­sailles is one of France’s most pop­u­lar tourist des­ti­na­tions, draw­ing mil­lions of vis­i­tors each year to mar­vel at its stun­ning archi­tec­ture and ornate interiors.

The fire at the palace comes just a few years after the dev­as­tat­ing blaze that gut­ted the famous Notre Dame cathe­dral in Paris, which is still under­go­ing a com­plex ren­o­va­tion project.

With its rich his­to­ry and cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance, the Palace of Ver­sailles is a cher­ished land­mark, and the swift response of the author­i­ties to the fire will be wel­comed by tourists and cul­tur­al her­itage enthu­si­asts alike.