The Service Room

This room displays an exquisite set of porcelain: white plates adorned with blue floral patterns and touches of purple pearl trim, in the style Marie Antoinette loved above all others. In an era when anything the queen favored instantly became fashionable, her two sisters-in-law, the Comtesse de Provence and the Comtesse d'Artois, ordered matching sets of their own. The dishes stand as evidence of how often the three women gathered over dessert and conversation — even as, beyond the palace walls, ordinary people had no food to put on a plate at all.