Fantasy Friday: the Hameau

Inspiration for a myriad Middle Eastern dictators, sundry competing Habsburgs, and, of course, the Trump Organization, Versailles needs no introduction. It’s as big, and as gilded, and as ostentatious as you can imagine – truly a place for visiting ambassadors to quiver at the might of the Sun King, Louis XIV, the man who Made France Great Again™.

But if you travel beyond the main building’s 2,000-odd rooms and past the suitably gargantuan water features, you can find a gentler, more tranquil scale. It is, of course, the Hameau (or hamlet), where the much-maligned (if far from beautiful) Marie-Antoinette is supposed to have played at milkmaids with her ladies.

Creation of Marie-Antoinette’s favourite architect, Richard Mique, a landscape designer so dedicated that he was guillotined for trying to help her escape imprisonment, the Hameau formed part of a trend for France’s elite to rediscover a simpler kind of life in the manner of Rousseau. While the rustic look didn’t extend to the interiors, which were duly lavish, Marie-Antoinette could escape some of the weight of ceremonial life and hang with friends and family in a way that must have felt relaxed for this daughter of the formidable Empress Maria Theresa.

Rather sweetly, the model farm, complete with lavender gardens, wasn’t just for show: it seems Marie-Antoinette wanted her children to learn where their food came from. Whether you consider the place an early example of kitsch, a classic of the picturesque landscape genre, or a metaphor so damn heavy-handed Robespierre could have written it himself, it’s a beautiful spot. And, as it’s off most guided tour routes, you’ll likely have much of it to yourself even when Versailles reopens.