📍Petit Trianon, 78000 Versailles, France
1774 – 1789“I was the fifteenth child of Empress Maria Theresa, raised informally in the palaces of Vienna and Schönbrunn, and at fourteen I was sent to France to marry the future Louis XVI. Versailles was vast, rigid and merciless, every moment watched and judged. In May 1774, two weeks after we became king and queen, Louis gave me the Petit Trianon, a small, elegant château in the park, for my own exclusive use, and it became my refuge. Here no one entered without my invitation, the rules of etiquette were relaxed, and I could be with my children and closest friends. I made its gardens into an English landscape of winding paths and follies, built a little theatre where I acted on the stage myself, and in 1783 had my architect Richard Mique build a rustic hamlet beside a lake: thatched cottages, a dairy, an orchard, a mill turned by a stream, and a working farm whose cows and hens supplied my table. On 5 October 1789 I was in these gardens when word came that a crowd was marching from Paris. I never saw them again.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today