In Versailles, the route of Queen Marie Antoinette is open

Paris - After four years of renovations, the spaces associated with Queen Marie Antoinette's stay at the Château de Versailles near Paris were officially reopened today, either again or for the very first time. Regular visitors will be able to enjoy them starting July 1.
    The areas called Domaine de Marie-Antoinette include the Petit Trianon, which the queen received as a gift from her husband Louis XVI, a theater, an idealized village that she had built, an English garden that she established there, as well as some pavilions she constructed within it. The visitable circuit, for which the entrance fee will be nine euros (about 260 crowns), also includes the Grand Trianon.
    The queen's theater had previously been one of the places that was off-limits to visitors of Versailles. The same is true for the Temple of Love and the artificial grotto in the garden.
    The renovations and restorations concerned both the garden, which was severely damaged by a hurricane in 1999, and the pavilions within it, the theater, and the Petit Trianon. Three million euros, or nearly 90 million crowns, were spent on them. Some of the objects were restored with the help of patrons, for instance, the refined and delicate theater was restored by the World Monuments Fund. The renovations will continue. The Swiss watchmaking company Breguet, whose customer was already Marie Antoinette, will also contribute financially to them.
    Architect Pierre-André Lablaude, who led the restoration, said that his goal was to create an illusion for the visitor that the queen had just stepped away for a moment. According to Christine Albanel, the director of the Château de Versailles, the restaurant and establishment of the new circuit should help attract more visitors to the Petit Trianon and its surroundings. This magnificent palace and its gardens are visited annually by four million paying visitors, but only about 300,000 come to the Trianon.
    Albanel also admitted that she wanted the reopening or new accessibility of the spaces associated with Marie Antoinette to approximately coincide with the release of a film made about this queen by American director Sofia Coppola. Some scenes were filmed directly in Versailles. The film, simply titled Marie Antoinette, premiered last month at the Cannes Film Festival and simultaneously hit theaters. "It's great advertising for Versailles," Albanel said.
    Marie Antoinette came to France in 1770 when she was married at the age of fifteen to the future Louis XVI. Her husband gifted her the Petit Trianon in 1774, as soon as he ascended to the throne. The queen retreated there to escape the strict court etiquette. She was executed in 1793, ten months after Louis XVI.

> Château de Versailles