As part of its 400th anniversary celebration, the Palace of Versailles is inviting visitors into the private rooms of Marie Antoinette, including three rooms entered only by a secret door in her official bedroom.
The three rooms—a boudoir, library and billiard room—are among other spaces that were open only to the queen’s closest friends, including her ‘hamlet,’ a small village on the grounds where aristocrats could play at being simple farmers.
The rooms will open next week. Versailles administrators say that the spaces will offer a “new understanding of history, with this paradox between public and private life, etiquette and intimacy, an extraordinary summary of history within a few square metres.”
Versailles itself, most often associated with Louis XIV, the ‘sun king,’ was only a small hunting lodge until Louis XIII decided in 1623 to build a new and grander-than-anyone-else’s palace on the site.
