In the gilded bedroom where three of France's greatest queens rested their powdered heads and bore numerous prodigy, I stepped through a door cleverly concealed in a wall covered with elaborate floral tapestry.
I was walking in the footsteps of Marie-Antoinette, who used this door to steal away to a serene octagonal room with two marble fireplaces and a satiny blue daybed -- the only place in the 700-room Palace of Versailles where the Austrian who became queen of France at age 17 could be alone. It's also the door she escaped through when angry mobs stormed the palace on the eve of the French Revolution and killed her guards. She was later jailed and beheaded.
During a palace tour just a few months earlier, I'd stood shoulder-to-shoulder with mobs of shutter-bugging tourists behind red velvet ropes that kept us from getting close to many of the treasures of Versailles. The 2,100-acre estate in a leafy Paris suburb gets more than 3 million visitors annually, and for more than 100 years it was the political center of France and the seat of the royal court. But on this particular Monday -- the only day of the week the house is closed -- I nearly had it to myself. I was getting a behind-the-scenes tour of rooms that have been recently restored, some that are rarely seen, and was rubbing shoulders with Marie-Antoinette.
Almost.
I followed my guide up a narrow staircase to another suite of private rooms, where the queen, who grew increasingly weary of the hundreds of attendants who followed her every move during her decade in the palace, liked to spend time with her closest friends and family members. I leaned into the cool plaster wall as I made my way up. Marie-Antoinette was famous for her poufy gowns -- 300 new ones a year, by some accounts -- and I couldn't imagine how she fit through the narrow passage without brushing against the dingy walls.
This was as close as I would get to the last queen of France, one of three who lived in the palace. The rooms were much more casual than the 24-karat Hall of Mirrors downstairs. They felt homey. The woodwork was painted, not gilded, and there was a painting of Marie-Antoinette's mother, the Empress of Austria, and a replica of the 647-diamond necklace that apparently helped spark the French Revolution.
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When a friend heard that I was going to France, she suggested calling her friend in Paris, who might offer a private tour of Versailles. I was skeptical; who gets the keys to Versailles?