The King's interior apartments

The Petit Appartement du Roi, the "new rooms" and the neighbouring rooms overlook the Cour de Marbre on the right and the Cour Royale. Far from the tumult of the Grands Appartements, they are situated on the first floor of the central body of the Palace, and in the 18th century they became real living and working apartments decorated in a very sophisticated style. These rooms and their functions were continually renewed and adapted to the tastes of the occupier. They can be seen every day as par

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The library of Louis XVI

This library, planned by the architect Gabriel shortly before the death of Louis XV in 1774, was one of the favourite rooms of Louis XVI who indulged in his passion for the sciences and in particular geography. You can see the terrestrial globe born by an Atlas, on which he followed the course of the great maritime explorations, and in particular that of La Pérouse whom he inspired and supported, and the great table by Riesener, whose plateau is made of one single piece of mahogany of 2.10 metres in diameter, mounted on jacks as Louis XVI needed a perfectly flat surface to draw his corrections of the maps.

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The porcelain dining room

This dining room, created under Louis XV in 1769 for his suppers after a hunt, was used especially by Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. For twenty years, around forty guests would sit around the extendable table for these meals known as "society suppers", a new type of supper, halfway between the grand official banquets and the "private" meals. If the number of guests exceeded the number of seats, the men went to the buffet laid out on the billiard table in the neighbouring room. This dining room is also called the Porcelain room as every year, at Christmas, Louis XVI had a presentation of the latest productions from the Sevres factory.

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The games room of Louis XVI

This was originally the cabinet des Curiosités of Louis XIV, an extraordinary room of which there are no traces. After several intermediary stages, it is now shown as it was at the time of Louis XVI when it was used as a Games Room. After the meal, the guests would come here for coffee. Louis XVI would sit at the backgammon table while his brothers would play billiards in the neighbouring room, or whist. A lot of the furniture, sold off during the Revolution, has been bought back: the four corner cupboards commissioned from Riesener in 1774 and the chairs delivered by Boulard in 1785. Works chosen by Louis XVI have been replaced on the walls: gouaches commemorating the military victories of his grandfather Louis XV, painted by Van Blarenberghe.

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