Petit Trianon

Walk around the building with your eyes before counting its floors. On the courtyard side, the staircase rises from a lower entrance level. On the garden side, the reception rooms open directly towards the landscape. The slope lets the same building appear to have different heights. The architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel completed the Petit Trianon in 1768 for Louis XV. Its columns, straight lines and restrained decoration draw on buildings of ancient Greece and Rome. In 1774, the new king Louis XVI gave it to his wife, Marie-Antoinette. She changed rooms and gardens to suit her smaller gatherings. Later restorations and its conversion into a museum devoted to her memory also shaped what visitors see. The route from the Petit Trianon to the Queen’s Hamlet follows the house into that designed landscape.