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Marie-Antoinette's newly-restored pastoral paradise tucked away amid the opulence of the Versailles chateau is to reopen to the public after four years of extensive restoration work.
French Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres on Monday inaugurated Marie-Antoinette's Estate, where the young queen sought to escape rigid court protocols, and which provided the backdrop for several scenes in US director Sofia Coppola's new film "Marie Antoinette".
The hamlet, which is in the grounds of the Petit Trianon building by the side of a lake, dates from 1783 and has taken four years to restore at a cost of some three million euros (3.7 million dollars), in the first step of a renovation programme.
It will reopen to the public on Saturday complete with its farmhouse and diary where the queen and her friends would milk docile, newly-washed cows and gather eggs.
It was here that Marie Antoinette sought to taste rural life far from the confines of the court, and where even her husband Louis XVI had to ask permission to visit.
The theatre where she performed on stage has also been renovated along with the English garden, replanted with its original herbs after being damaged in the 1999 storms which tore down some 3,000 trees in the chateau's immense gardens.
The Temple of Love as well as the Grotto from which the queen fled on 1789 as the French Revolution reached the gates of Versailles have also been restored.
This is a "step in the life of Versailles", said the chateau's director Christine Albanel.
"We are not inventing things, but we are highlighting existing places which are perhaps less well known by the public," she added.
Of the four million annual visitors to the sumptuous chateau, southwest of Paris, less than 300,000 find their way through its grounds to the Petit Trianon, which was Marie-Antoinette's country mansion, and its treasures including the hamlet.
One part of Versailles is "Louis XIV (the Sun King) and Marie-Antoinette is the other," Albanel said, adding that the grounds given to the Austrian-born queen, who was executed in 1793, were magical places of "intimacy and refinement."
Designed by the architect Gabriel, the Petit Trianon was given to Marie-Antoinette as a wedding present in 1774 by her husband Louis XVI.
It is a perfect example of the "18th century spirit of the picturesque marriage of architecture and vegetation which aimed to create a haven of serenity and harmony," said Donnedieu de Vabres.
The managing director of the Swiss watch company Suisses Breguet, Nicolas Hayek, said the company was now going to put up some five million euros to restore the Petit Trianon, as well as other places beloved by Marie-Antoinette, such as the French Pavilion.
The minister said Marie-Antoinette's Estate was a "new concept, a new pole for a visit, a new way of spreading the influence of Versailles."
Coppola's film, a fun-filled romp with a pulsating modern soundtrack, was booed by audiences when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May, but attracted a strong audience in France of more than 681,000 people in its first two weeks.
Coppola was given unrivalled access to film in Versailles and its parks, lending the movie a touch of authenticity. It opens in the United States in October.
Entry to the Marie-Antoinette Estate will be free on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, and cost nine euros afterwards.
jcp/jkb/smc
Heritage-France-Versailles
AFP 261601 GMT 06 06
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