Hameau de la Reine is considered a “testament” to the extravagant lifestyle of one of the world’s most famous queens.
Marie Antoinette (1755 – 1793) was the last Queen of France before the French Revolution. She was born in Austria and was only 14 when she married Louis-Auguste, who later ascended to the throne of Emperor Louis XVI. In 1783, Marie built Hameau de la Reine (Village of the Queen) near the Palace of Versailles.
Hameau-style villages are very popular with 18th-century French aristocracy, most notably Hameau de Chantilly in the garden of the Élysée palace. The small village is modeled after a farm in the Normandy region, which has seven thatched-roof buildings with a rustic appearance, but the interior is extravagant, often used for concerts, games and meals. gala dinner. The Queen was very impressed with Hameau de Chantilly and wanted a place like that for herself. Finally, the village of Queen Marie was completed in 1786.
The Queen’s village viewed from above.
It has a vast meadow with a lake and a surrounding stream, the ancient Love Temple on an island with shrubs and fragrant flowers, an octagonal tower called Belvédère. A series of buildings in the village are built in different styles, each with a specific function and located in the middle of the garden. The largest and most famous of these is the Queen’s House, connected to the billiard room by a wooden corridor.
The queen really turns the village into a place to take a relaxing stroll, or organize small gatherings. In fact, there is a farm where the Queen insists it aims to educate the royal children about nature and animals. The farm has a dairy cow, a flock of sheep, a dove shed, a shed, and a factory.
Marie Antoinette and her friends will dress up as shepherds or herdsmen, roam around the village pretending to be farmers. In fact, they still had the comforts of a royal lifestyle. A group of real farmers was appointed by the Queen to take care of the farm and the animals, and grow fruit and vegetables for meals. Sometimes Marie Antoinette milked cows and sheep by herself to feel the taste of authentic rural life.
Marie Antoinette was very proud of Hameau her, a historian of the nineteenth century was recorded that: ” N ữ Queen will invite the king and the royal family to the party in the village. There, at a desk placed under the honeysuckle tree, the Queen herself will pour coffee for everyone, proudly boasting about how cheesy cream, how fresh eggs, the sweet taste of strawberries … as evidence most obvious to her village care skills “.
The Mill, a factory in the village of Hameau de la Reine, has no function but decoration.
Surrounding the village are solid fences and walls, so that only people close to the Queen can enter. This led people to speculate that Queen Marie set the village as a secret rendezvous with the nobility. When the French Revolution broke out, Marie Antoinette was accused of depleting national assets, causing people to be in misery and financial crisis. She was executed on October 16, 1793. Some scholars consider Marie Antoinette and her frivolous lifestyle to be one of the causes of the French Revolution, while other scholars believe that the Queen was treated unfairly and gave her an attitude. more sympathetic to the charges she suffered.
Most of Hameau de la Reine village still exists today and is considered as a testament to the luxurious life of Queen Marie, because it was born in the middle of the French recession. Apart from being severely damaged and completely destroyed during the war, what was left was renovated in the late 1990s and opened to tourists for sightseeing. Completely destroyed parts were also restored from 2016-2018, and became the home of many animals taken care of by an animal protection organization.
The interior of the Queen’s house.
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