Over 4 million people annually visit the Palace of Versailles, but most visitors miss the hidden beauty of the private estate of Queen Marie-Antoinette. Distance the crowds and access areas reserved for the private lives and loves of the royalty.

With a diamond-encrusted key, Louis XVI offered his beloved wife Marie Antoinette an escape from the ritualized public life in the Palace that she found so suffocating. This key opened the doors to a secret world, far removed from the public life at the palace that she hated, and accessible to only a very few. The small palace of the Petit Trianon was her private world and the place where she was happiest. Follow in her footsteps, through her English gardens and into the place she called home, furnished today as it was then. We may be able to peek into Marie Antoinette’s private theatre, often called the jewel of Versailles, installed so the queen herself could star in popular plays applauded by her fashionable ladies-in-waiting!

Just down the path from the richly adorned palace, Marie Antoinette commissioned a replica rustic village, evoking Normandy with its thatched cottages and dairy farm. Far from the elaborate life and rituals of the palace, she would play at being a shepherdess surrounded by her closest friends and confidantes.

No visit to Versailles is complete without seeing the secluded charm of the Petit Trianon. Join us on this journey into the confidential side of royal life at Versailles.