Question: How much money did the Ancien regime spend on Versailles?
About the article "Palace of Versailles", section "Costs of restoration programmes".

Candidate passages:
The restoration initiatives launched by the Fifth Republic have proven to be perhaps more costly than the expenditures of the palace in the Ancien Régime.
Starting in the 1950s, when the museum of Versailles was under the directorship of Gérald van der Kemp, the objective was to restore the palace to its state – or as close to it as possible – in 1789 when the royal family left the palace.
Among the early projects was the repair of the roof over the Hall of Mirrors; the publicity campaign brought international attention to the plight of post-war Versailles and garnered much foreign money including a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.
Concurrently, in Russia, the restoration of the Pavlovsk Palace located outside of Leningrad – today's Saint Petersburg – brought the attention of French museum authorities, including the curators of Versailles (Massie, 1990).
Pavlovsk Palace was built by Catherine the Great's son Paul.
The czarevitch and his wife, Marie Feodorovna, were avid francophiles, who, on a visit to France and Versailles in the 1780s, purchased great quantities of silk, which they later used to upholster furniture in Pavlosk.
The palace survived the Russian Revolution intact – descendants of Paul I were living in the palace at the time the communists evicted them – however, during the Second World War, the furniture and artifacts housed in the palace, which had been transformed into a museum, were removed.
In the process of evacuation the museum collections, remnants of the silks purchased by Paul I of Russia and Marie Feodorovna were found and conserved.
After the war when Soviet authorities were restoring the palace, which had been gutted by the retreating Nazi forces, they recreated the silk fabrics by using the conserved 18th century remnants (Massie, 1990).
When the French authorities saw the results of Russian efforts and the high quality they were able to achieve, the French revived 18th-century weaving techniques so as to reproduce the silks used in the decoration of Versailles (Massie, 1990).
The two greatest achievements of this initiative are seen today in wall hangings used in the restoration of the "chambre de la reine" in the "grand appartement de reine" and the "chambre du roi" in the "appartement du roi".
While the design used for the "chambre du roi" was, in fact, from a design that had been used during the "Ancien Régime" to decorate the "chambre de la reine", it nevertheless represents a great achievement in the on-going restoration at Versailles.
Additionally, this project, which took over seven years to achieve, required several hundred kilograms of silver and gold to complete (Meyer, 1989).
One of the more costly endeavors for the museum and the government of France's Fifth Republic has been to repurchase as much of the original furnishings as possible.
However, because furniture with a royal provenance – and especially furniture that was made for Versailles – is a highly sought after commodity on the international market, the museum has spent considerable funds on retrieving much of the palace's original furnishings (Kemp, 1976).
In 2003, a new restoration initiative – the "Grand Versailles" project – was started, which necessitated unexpected repair and replantation of the gardens.
The project will be on-going for the next seventeen years, funded with a state endowment of €135 million allocated for the first seven years.
The project will address such concerns as security for the palace, and continued restoration of the "bosquet des trois fontaines".
VINCI underwrote the €12 million restoration project for the Hall of Mirrors, which was completed in 2006 (Leloup, 2006).
We may never know the true amount spent on the creation of Versailles, and most current estimates are speculative.
A recent estimate has placed the amount spent on Versailles during the "Ancien régime" as US$2 billion (Littell, 2000).
This figure in all probability is an under-evaluation of the money spent on Versailles.
France's Fifth Republic expenditures alone that have been directed to restoration and maintenance at Versailles undoubtedly surpass those of the Sun King.
The taille () was a direct land tax on the French peasantry and non-nobles in "Ancien Régime" France.
The tax was imposed on each household and based on how much land it held. 
In the "Digest", Paulus wrote a passage on money.
Much as Aristotle did, Paulus described the nature of money, including how it arises from the inconvenience of barter.  
To economise on their maintenance at court, and to prevent the queen (to whom a large, allied brood would give comfort) from having too much influence, the last four of the princesses were raised far from the court, at Poitou in the Fontevraud Abbey from 1738 to 1750, where they passed their formative years before returning to Versailles.
Madame Thérèse did not return to Versailles, and Madame Louise came back, but was very strongly influenced by the monastic life, to which she later returned at "Carmel de Saint-Denis".
The king kept the eldest one at his side; he was attached to her and separation made him very sad.
Madame Adélaïde owed her maintenance at Versailles to her wishes and her successful request to remain near the king, whom she knew how to influence.
Mesdames, together with the Dauphin, sustained a long battle against the successive mistresses of their father, particularly Madame de Pompadour, who they called amongst themselves "Maman putain" (Mama Whore).
Their support of the cause of the devout was permanent, and the reason, for their entire tenure at court, for their difficult relation with the king, who only consented very late to let them occupy apartments on the ground floor of the main building at Versailles, the apartments which today bear their name.
Among them, Madame Adélaïde was the one that exercised the most political role at the court, managing her sisters after the death of Madame Henriette in 1752, and intriguing unceasingly in favor of her brother and for the reestablishment of moral order at court.
Upon the accession to the throne of her nephew, she cherished the hope of exercising an influence over him but was soon forced to realize that he would not give her the role she wished.
Pushed away from power bit by bit, and representing the old court against the new generation, she increasingly retired with her sisters to the Château de Bellevue, which had been constructed for Madame de Pompadour.
They finally obtained it and passed most of the last decade of the "ancien régime" there.
After the days of October 1789, Adélaïde and Victoire retired to Bellevue, from whence they fled, ending up, after much wandering, in Italy, where they spent the remainder of their days. 
During the ancien regime there were several Hôtel de Guénégauds in Paris.