Let them cake — and see inside the queen’s most intimate chambers.
Following a seven-year renovation, Marie Antoinette’s private rooms in France’s Palace of Versailles reopened to the public this Tuesday in celebration of the former royal residence’s 400th birthday.
The rooms include a library, boudoir, dining room and billiard room, all lavishly decorated and outfitted with Antoinette’s personally picked furnishings.
They are spread over two floors which are accessed through a door in the queen’s bedroom.
“These rooms, to which only a few friends and her close entourage were admitted, so small they can only be viewed by groups of 10 people at most, exude lightness,” Versailles’ president, Catherine Pégard, told the Guardian.
Antoinette, who was born the Archduchess of Austria before becoming France’s final queen, moved to Versailles at age 14 to marry her future husband and king, Louis XVI.
Following her 1774 crowning, she began personally overseeing the apartment’s renovation, an arduous process that continued until 1788, just a year before she was forced from the palace with her husband and children by enraged citizens.
(Louis got the guillotine in January 1793, Marie that October.)
During the nearly 15 years she spent curating her rooms, she deeply angered Ange-Jacques Gabriel, the king’s head architect.
Antoinette’s bedroom. AFP via Getty Images
A type of armchair called a meridienne in Antoinette’s chambers. Gianni Dagli Orti/Shutterstock
A bed in the queen’s bedroom at Versailles. Gianni Dagli Orti/Shutterstock
Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors. Corbis via Getty Images
The courtyard of Versailles, seen here in 2017. AFP via Getty Images
Versailles’ Orangery parterre, seen here in the early 2000s. Getty Images
The chambers’ reopening aligns with the palace’s 400th anniversary. AFP via Getty Images
A portrait of Marie Antoinette with a rose, dated 1783. Universal Images Group via Getty Images“She demonstrated extraordinary taste, confidence and audacity,” explained Versailles curator Hélène Delalex, according to the Guardian.
“Just a few months after her arrival at Versailles without even asking the king, she ordered Gabriel to carry out major works, which he refused and complained to the sovereign. The tone was set. But this passion continued unabated and only the Revolution was able to put an end to it.”
Highlights of the apartment include a Gold Room, located next to the expansive library and named for the motifs depicting 18th century Egypt; numerous opulent wall coverings, including one called Great Pineapple; and in an alcove of the boudoir, amid elaborate panels commemorating the monarchy, an ottoman where Antoinette would take her midday rest, the Times detailed.
