Overview
Gabriel’s design of 1762 is a cube of four different facades, each answering a different aspect of the garden — the first serious neoclassical building in France. Marie-Antoinette redecorated it in her own taste and ran it on her own etiquette, which the court resented and the pamphleteers used against her. The mechanical mirrors in the boudoir still rise to cover the windows.
Highlights
It is a fifteen-minute walk or a short train ride from the palace, and included in the Passport ticket. Go here rather than lingering at the palace if you have half a day — the rooms are at human scale and far less crowded. The English garden and the Queen’s theatre are part of the same estate.