Le Petit Trianon in Versailles: Welcome home, Marie Antoinette
The infamous queen of France Marie Antoinette would be right at home again could she return to her newly restored chateau at Versailles, a 40-minute train ride west of Paris. Le Petit Trianon re-opened last week after a yearlong renovation aimed at making it look as it would have when the queen left for Paris in 1789, where she went to the guillotine four years later.
Built by Louis XV for his mistress Madame de Pompadour, the chateau later became a wedding present from Louis XVI to Marie Antoinette, who used it as a refuge from the stultifying protocol of the French court. Decorated in the opulent, feminine Rococo style popular at the time, it appeared in the 2006 film “Marie Antoinette,” directed by Sofia Coppola.
Part of a larger French government project to upgrade the Chateau of Versailles (of which it is part), the $7.8-million restoration of Le Petit Trianon was underwritten by the Swiss watch manufacturer Montres Breguet, which made timepieces for the ill-fated, luxury-loving queen.
— Susan Spano, Los Angeles Times staff writer
[Photo: Francois Mori, Associated Press]
13 Comments on “Le Petit Trianon in Versailles: Welcome home, Marie Antoinette”
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October 7th, 2008 at 3:23 am
Hey, Susan, go back to journalism school and take a history course: where do you get the “infamous”? How about “maligned” or “martyred”? History indicates these terms to be more accurate.
October 7th, 2008 at 10:51 am
As a native of Vienna, I do protest. She was a royal princess to begin with; a daughter of the Empress Maria Theresa, a just and enlightened ruler. Of course she was accustomed to luxury since she was a Queen’s child. But she was a good woman, stayed with her husband even when she had a chance to leave. She was not an adulteress, but a decent Roman Catholic wife and mother and the victim of horrible slander.
October 7th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
The above comments are correct, especially the historical perspective of Godrun. Although I’m not a Catholic and don’t care if she was “a decent Roman Catholic wife” who stayed with her husband, Marie was in fact married off to a stranger in France to unite their royal families with no say of her own and she made the best of it. Empress Maria-Theresa was enlightened for her times, like the last Emperor Josef, never bigoted against any of the peoples of the Empire but trying to unite all ethnic groups under the Habsburg/ Austro=Hungarian umbrella. However, Maria Theresa’s use of her many children to enhance the empire by marriage did not always result in happiness for them. Marie Antoinette was a victim of this marriage market and the French Court’s policies which had alienated the people. Turning her into a villainess is just the French way of excusing a barbaric, unjustified murder, and turning it into a cause of celebration on Bastille Day. It was more like a communist revolution with blood on the hands of the mobs, nothing to celebrate, nothing like our American revolution which was to overthrow a foreign occupying army and king. (Marie also never said “Let them eat cake” in a contemptuous way — cake was just a form of plain baked good, which required no fancy decoration or ingredients, sustenance food.)
October 7th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
“Infamous”? Perfectly stupid thing to say.
October 7th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Queen Marie-Antoinette was a really decent and faithful queen. The reason she, Louis XVI and seven year old Louis XVII were brutally murdered by (politically motivated)”revolutionaries”(including Napoleon who proved to be even more luxury loving and a Hitler type despot) was because they were too dull and too generous to anticipate their horrible fate. Modern historians generally consider them and the hundreds of other Reign of Terror victims to be Martyrs, not “Luxury Lovers”.
Next time do your homework.
October 7th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Glad there were so many indignant comments about the “infamous” Marie Antoinette. Another great lady who has suffered a bum rap for hundreds of years is Lucrezia Borgia.
Far from being the conniving poisoner that her sicko brother and other family members portrayed her as, Lucrezia was a good and pious lady who has taken the rap for centuries for deeds committed by her family members.
October 7th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
The vitriol in the comment section is astounding - to question someone’s journalistic integrity because you disagree with one word choice is narrow minded. Besides, the point of the article is not Marie Antoinette herself, but the renovation of a building she once inhabited.
October 7th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
@crazylegsmeg
On the contrary. I think readers have every right to raise objections over “one word choice”, especially if those words are loaded. Just as you stated, the article was about the building, if the author would have stuck to facts and stayed away from loaded words such as “infamous” and “luxury loving”, I don’t think anyone would have issue over the article.
October 7th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
i also agree that the everyone has a right to object - although they could have been less rude. i was glad for the comments myself. growing up my impression of MA was negative. basically i was told she was a spoiled brat. i haven’t checked myself but at least i know that there are those out there that feel she wasn’t so bad. to discourage negative comments is in fact “narrow minded”.
October 7th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Cake was not just bread….it was the ends or butts of the bread back in the day. So it was not nourishment she was talking about, it was that the people of France did not deserve to eat the whole loaf of bread, but rather the ends of the bread.
October 7th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
You can see a copy of Le Petit Trianon at 3800 Washington St. in San Francisco, 94118. It’s pretty close, probably a better view out the back that looks to the Bay, but doesn’t have the beautiful garden in front.
October 8th, 2008 at 8:44 am
@shirley
you say “our American revolution which was to overthrow a foreign occupying army and king”??? i think not. so-called Americans at the time were in fact English… that’s as ridiculous as saying North Carolinians overthrowing the US government because they object to the foreign occupying army (i.e. Fort Bragg, NC) and the US president…
you also say the French Revolution is “more like a communist revolution with blood on the hands of the mobs”… oh so.. when we do it its glorious but when other do it, its bloody? even my 6 year old can see something is wrong with that logic…
do even a simple wikipedia search on the American Revolution… it was basically perpetrated by a bunch of greedy profit seeking businessmen who refused to pay taxes… look up the Boston Tea Party and the Sons of Liberty… in modern terms guess what… our so-called forefathers were Terrorists…
November 1st, 2008 at 6:06 am
“Confessions” by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1778):
“(…) je me rappelai le pis-aller d’une grande princesse à qui l’on disoit que les paysans n’avoient pas de pain, et qui répondit: Qu’ils mangent de la brioche”.
Translation: “(…) at length I recollected the thoughtless saying of a great princess, who, on being informed that the country people had no bread, replied: Then let them eat pastry!”.