PARIS (Reuters) -The Palace of Versailles, one of France’s main tourist sites, re-opened on Tuesday after closing temporarily in its second security scare in four days.
France was already on its highest state of alert after the Oct. 13 murder of a teacher in a suspected Islamist attack.
The Palace said earlier in the day on social media that it had evacuated visitors for “security reasons” without providing further details.
BFM TV, citing police sources, said that a bomb squad had been dispatched to the Palace.
The local police body for Versailles said later that the police operation had ended and an earlier security cordon that had been put in place was lifted.
The Palace, built in the 17th century for King Louis XIV, was the main royal residence until the French Revolution and the overthrow of the monarchy in 1789.
Tourists queuing outside the Palace, a UNESCO World Heritage site, had mixed feelings.
“It’s a very worrying and tense situation, but we can’t stop living either,” said Jean-Pierre Brehon, 72, from nearby Saint-Germain-en-Laye outside Paris.
“As foreigners, we’re not really used to all of this,” said 19-year old Swiss tourist Margarita Costa. “We find it a bit shocking.”
On Saturday, one day after a teacher in France was killed, bomb alerts that proved false forced the evacuation of the Louvre museum, the Palace of Versailles and Paris’ Gare de Lyon train station.
(Reporting by Dominique Vidalon, Clotaire Achi; Editing by Benoit Van Overstraeten, Jonathan Oatis and Rod Nickel)
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