After many years of disuse and out of sight of visitors, the room where the French Revolution began is again open to the public after a full restoration.
In the room, commonly called the Jeu de Paume after the tennis-like game it was built for, delegates to the Estates General in 1789 signed the ‘Tennis Court Oath,’ pledging not to leave until France had been granted a written constitution. A partly-completed painting of the event by Jacques-Louis David depicting the event now hangs in the room.
For all its importance, it’s had a checkered history since. After the revolution it was used as a storeroom and then a painter’s studio. In the 1830s, the then-king dedicated the palace to a museum of history and in the 1880s, the Jeu de Paume became a museum of the French Revolution. Decades later it fell into disuse.
Image: Jasmine37/Wikimedia
