Marie Antoinette's farm

 

Marie-Antoinette escaped from the stifling royal court life in Paris to Versailles, from the stifling court life of the Grand Château de Versailles to the Grand Trianon, and from the stifling court life of the Grand Trianon to the Petit Trianon. Still feeling stifled, she ordered her architect, Richard Mique, and court painter Hubert Robert, to design a hameau (hamlet, village) to remind her of her native Austria. Louis XV had built a model farm here, so farm life was nothing new to the Château de Versailles.

It was built at the edge of the Petit Trianon's carp-filled Grand Lac (large lake), and it was from here, on October 5th, 1789, that Marie-Antoinette fled from frivolous fantasy to brual reality as the revolutionaries from Paris approached the palace.

But until then, life in the hameau was good, with 10 cottages modeled on those at Chantilly, a milk house furnished in marble, a little vineyard, pens for extraordinarily well-kept livestock, and other accoutrements of village life without the dirt or uncertainty.
Peacocks strut, pigs oink, and the hundreds of carp in the lake approach with mouths gaping if you so much as look their way.

atasteoftravelblog/marie-antoinettes

House and billiard room of Marie Antoinette

Andrew Hopkinsart/hameau-de-la-reine

The Queen's house and billiard room is located in the centre of the hamlet. Consisting of two floors, the upper level comprises the petit salon, also known as the "room of the nobles", an anteroom in the form of a "Chinese cabinet" and the large living room with wood paneling hung with tapestries of Swiss style in embroidered wool. From the room's six windows, the Queen could easily control the work fields and activity of the hamlet. Access is via the staircase of the round tower. At the center of the room is a harpsichord which Marie Antoinette loved to play. On the ground floor, paved with single slabs of stone, the building includes a backgammon room and a dining room. The lyre-backed chairs in mahogany lined with green morocco, were created by Georges Jacob. To the left, another building housing the billiard room is connected to the Queen's house by a wooden gallery decorated with trellises and twelve hundred St. Clement faience pots, marked in the blue figures of the Queen. Upstairs, a small apartment which seems to have been inhabited by the architect Richard Mique, has five rooms including a library. Despite the rustic appearance of facades, the interior finish and furnishings are luxurious and have been created by the carpenter Georges Jacob and the ébéniste Jean-Henri Riesener.