Versailles reopens Marie Antoinette’s secret apartment for anniversary

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.”

Ref: Versailles reopens Marie Antoinette’s secret apartment for anniversary (nypost)