The Palace of Versailles, or Chateau de Versailles (in French: Château de Versailles) is a building that served as a royal residence in past centuries. The palace is located in the municipality of Versailles, near Paris, in the Isle of France. Its construction was ordered by King Louis XIV, and is one of the most important monarchical architectural complexes in Europe. With 7.3 million visitors in 2012, it is also one of the most important tourist sites in France. With its three palaces, its gardens and its park, Versailles is an immense domain. Although Louis XIII built a hunting lodge there with a garden, Louis XIV is its true creator, since it gave it its breadth and determined its destiny. Louis XIV left Paris and decided to build Versailles as a small city far from problems.
The Winter Palace (Russian: Зимний дворец) which is located in Saint Petersburg, Russia, was between 1732 and 1917, the official residence of the Russian tsars. It is currently the headquarters of the Hermitage Museum. It is located between the Avenue Dvortsóvaya Náberezhnaya that borders the Nevá River and the Palace Square, near the site where the original Winter Palace of Pedro El Grande was located; The current Winter Palace is the fourth that was built and underwent continuous remodeling between the end of 1750 and 1837, when it was seriously damaged by a fire being reconstructed immediately.The attack on the palace in 1917 became an icon of the Russian revolution. The palace was built on a monumental scale whose objective was to be a reflection of the grandeur and power of Imperial Russia. From the palace, the tsar and autocrat of all the Russias ruled over a territory of 22,400,000 km² (almost 1/6 of the continental surface) and over 176,4 million people. It is the product of the design of numerous architects, among which the work of Bartolomeo Rastrelli stands out, in what was called the Elizabethan Baroque style (at the time of the reign of Elizabeth I of Russia); The green and white palace has the shape of an elongated rectangle. The palace has 1,786 doors, 1,945 windows, 1,500 rooms and 117 stairs. Its main facade measures 150 m in length and 30 m in height. The reconstruction of 1837 did not change the exterior appearance, but large sections of its interior were redesigned in a variety of styles and tastes, which is why the palace is described as "a nineteenth-century palace inspired by a Rococo-style model."
