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How a royal palace became a history museum
Some rooms preserve a royal setting. Others were rebuilt to tell a national history in paintings. Learn to recognise the museum within the palace.
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Making space for a national story
Louis-Philippe came to the throne in 1830. His museum assembled kings, armies and later rulers within a history of France. The Gallery of Great Battles was a central part of that project. Architects removed divisions between earlier apartments to create a long gallery for the paintings. The sequence celebrates victories from different periods. Its paintings are historical representations, many made long after the events they depict. A gallery that places successive regimes along one route is also making a choice about which events deserve space. Look at the dates of the events separately from the dates when the pictures were painted.
A palace emptied of its household
When the royal family left in October 1789, the palace lost the household around which daily life had been organised. During the Revolution, furniture and other contents were sold or dispersed. The building survived, while successive governments considered how to use it. Louis-Philippe chose to make it a museum rather than his residence.
Restoring a royal interior
Other projects have recovered rooms from before the museum conversion. The ground-floor apartments of Louis XV’s daughters were restored and refurnished over several decades. The apartments of Louis XV’s son, the Dauphin or heir to the throne, underwent another major restoration before reopening in 2022. The present palace therefore includes preserved decoration, reconstructed furnishings and rooms deliberately changed for the museum. Mercury’s bed arrived under Louis-Philippe, while the queen’s bed and fabrics were recreated from historical evidence. When you look around a room, let the building, decoration and furniture have their separate histories.
Photo gallery 1
Image credits
- Azurfrog · Grand Trianon Salon des malachites.JPG · CC BY-SA 3.0 · WebP / AVIF
- G.Garitan · Grand Cabinet madame victoire 1505549.jpg · CC BY-SA 4.0 · WebP / AVIF
- Pedemann · Grand Trianon Billard.jpg · CC BY-SA 4.0 · WebP / AVIF
- Jen Wen Luoh · Petit Trianon - Antichambre 01.jpg · CC BY 2.0 · WebP / AVIF
- Jorge Láscar from Melbourne, Australia · Le grand escalier - Petit Trianon (24276910376).jpg · CC BY 2.0 · WebP / AVIF
- Photo: Myrabella / Wikimedia Commons · Cabinet dore Marie-Antoinette Versailles.jpg · CC BY-SA 3.0 · WebP / AVIF
- Hyperios · Bosquet du théâtre d eau Les Belles Danses.jpg · CC BY-SA 4.0 · WebP / AVIF
- Léa Le Floc'h · Chateau de Versailles et son reflet.jpg · CC BY-SA 4.0 · WebP / AVIF
- Coyau / Wikimedia Commons · Hameau de la Reine, maison de la Reine depuis les Cascatelles 01.jpg · CC BY-SA 3.0 · WebP / AVIF