In Versailles, the adjacent palace of Marie Antoinette is opening

Paris - The reconstructed rooms of French Queen Marie Antoinette, furnished with period furniture, in the Petit Trianon, located in the gardens of the royal palace of Versailles, are reopening to the public. Visitors will have the opportunity to explore the entire interior of the building, which the queen partially adapted to remind her of her Austrian home that she longed for over the years, starting from October 2.
After a year-long reconstruction, tourists can now walk through an area three times larger than before. In addition to the Petit Trianon, the French pavilion a few meters away is also accessible. This was made possible by a generous donation from the watchmaking company Breguet, part of the Swatch Group, which had previously provided its services to Marie Antoinette. While the Versailles Palace administration took care of the decoration, the patronage company donated 5.3 million euros, nearly 130 million crowns in conversion, for stabilizing the foundations of the buildings and their complex reconstruction.
It is almost exactly 217 years to the day since the Parisian crowd forced the royal family to leave Versailles and move to Paris during the French Revolution. "We wanted to stop history at this moment, as if to say to visitors: 'The queen is not here right now, let’s take advantage of that,'" said Pierre-André Lablaude, the chief architect of the restoration works, to journalists.
King Louis XVI and the queen never returned to the magnificent palace after their departure on October 6. The republican government later had them executed for treason. This year, during a visit to Austria, the current French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner apologized for this act.
In the building that was inhabited solely by women, everything shines anew. "We tried to recreate the atmosphere of comfort and intimacy that prevailed here at that time," Lablaude remarked.
The Petit Trianon was built at the end of the 18th century by Louis XV at the behest of his mistress Madame de Pompadour, so they would have an undisturbed place to meet while not being too far from the court in the main palace. As the rightful wife, Marie Antoinette mainly used the place to escape from the court's hustle and bustle. There existed her mini-court where cultural life thrived, as evidenced by the Trianon garden theater.
On the ground floor of the Petit Trianon, there is, among other things, a guard room, a billiard room, and a room with dishes, Sèvres porcelain, and other everyday items. On the first floor are the queen's chambers, including her library. The Versailles Palace administration had a difficult task gathering original furniture that had been stolen or sold during the revolution. Some was restored, and some was newly manufactured.
The floral wallpapers are authentic, decorated according to original templates discovered during the restoration works. The tall French windows with large glass panes are also original.
In the rooms designated for Louis XVI, who never actually slept in them, the furniture is from Empress Marie-Louise, Napoleon's Austrian wife. In one room, there is a mini-museum dedicated to the last French empress Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III, who founded the cult of Marie Antoinette.