The Billiard Room: A Queen's Window to Home

The billiard table in this room originally belonged to Louis XV. When Marie Antoinette took possession of the Petit Trianon, she had that table moved upstairs next to the dining room and installed a different one here for the officers of her guard to use instead. The table moved upstairs was lost during the French Revolution, along with many other pieces of furniture from Versailles. The billiard table seen in the room today was not installed by Marie Antoinette either — it was brought in and restored in the 19th century from elsewhere, simply to illustrate the room's original function.

On the left-hand wall hang two large paintings depicting her sisters performing in plays and ballets back in her native Austria. Whenever Marie Antoinette felt the loneliness of having married into a foreign land, she would look at these paintings and recall the happy childhood she had left behind. Above the fireplace at the far end stands a bust of Marie Antoinette herself.