After the overthrow of the monarchy in August 1792, all of the furniture, artworks, and other priceless objects of the Petit Trianon, carefully curated over the years, were removed, sold, and scattered under a decree of the National Convention dated 10 June 1793.

A symbol of the new monarchy, which aspired to more intimacy and tranquillity than the permanent representation imposed by Louis XIV, the Petit Trianon château also reflected the fragility of the system condemned by the French Revolution of 1789.

[12] Encouraged by his favorite, Madame de Pompadour, he had several buildings constructed on new plots of land to the north-east of the marble château, reviving the idea of a small country fantasy that had once prevailed at his grandfather's porcelain Trianon.

[14] This almost self-evident balance between the ancient and the modern – two seemingly incompatible genres – is concealed behind an apparent simplicity: in his novelty, Gabriel adds the elegance of the eighteenth century to the strength and nobility of the classicism inherited from Mansart.

The place suited her aspirations perfectly, and she felt at home in the floral atmosphere that she had wanted but had not decided on: The bowls of fruit carved into the paneling by Guibert, the metamorphoses of divinities into flowers according to the wishes of Cochin and the brushes of Lépicié or Jollain, the country scenes composed by Lagrenée or Vien, the flower gardens and botanical gardens beneath her windows designed by Richard or Jussieu, the floral motifs on the furniture by Foliot or Joubert, everything was designed to satisfy the Queen's aspiration to escape the constraints of the court of Versailles to a world devoted to nature.

The Petit Trianon, abandoned following the departure of the royal family in 1789, stripped of all its furniture at the auction sale of 1793 and even temporarily transformed into a hotel,[35] was made available to Pauline Borghese, favorite sister of Emperor Napoleon I, in keeping with the tradition of this residence, which remained the "women's castle".

[37] Although the architect Trepsat ordered the return of the paintings deposited at the Musée de Versailles during the Revolution, most of the frames remained empty during the Empire were replaced by wallpapers depicting landscapes or plain green.

[note 5][50] On the occasion of the Universal Exhibition of 1867, the Empress wanted to organize a retrospective in homage to the sovereign, welcoming the fact that "her soul, after more than a century of wandering, was finally returning to its haven at Trianon".

On the instructions of Louis-Joseph Napoléon Lepic, aide-de-camp to Napoleon III and supervisor of the worksite, the small château was emptied of its Empire furniture,[note 6] the façades cleaned, the paintings repainted, the damaged floors replaced and the doors repaired.

[53] However, the resurgence in Marie-Antoinette's popularity at the end of the 20th century, accompanied by the release of blockbuster films devoted to her which helped to propagate the myth, has once again shed light on this small country château of a queen of France who was alternately adored and reviled, and who, without realizing it, contributed to her tragic fate.

[63] The Italian-style flat roof is concealed by a balustrade with openwork guilloches.The decoration is marked by a subtle evolution in art and not by an absolute victory for modernity; while certain old habits remain, such as the shell or trophies of Love, they rub shoulders with new forms, in the sculpture or woodwork, whose motifs are directly inspired by the gardens of Trianon, such as the garlands of leaves or the profusion of fruit.

The vestibule leads to the château's main staircase, which has two straight flights, is built of Saint-Leu limestone and adorned with gilded bronze and wrought iron railing,[59] the work of locksmiths Louis Gamain[68] and François Brochois.

On the half-landing of the staircase at the seventh step, another small door on the left leads to the former Chinese ring gallery via a long corridor created in 1781 – Marie-Antoinette's most important transformation of the château[71] – and located under the terrace facing the French Garden.

The two paintings on display, by Austrian painter Johann Georg Weikert, were commissioned to be placed in the large dining room on the first floor[70] and both depict the show given on 24 January 1765 at Schönbrunn on the honor of Joseph II's second marriage to the Princess of Bavaria.

Marie-Antoinette had asked her mother Marie-Thérèse to make copies of these two paintings that she loved; in one of them, she appears at the age of ten dancing with her brothers[note 10] a ballet-pantomime by Gluck, while the other depicts her older sisters performing the four Muses in an opera.

The mechanism was built for 24,470 livres[89] by Jean-Tobie Mercklein, royal engineer at the Menus-Plaisirs and designer a few years earlier of the bague game,[note 23] and the Crown's master locksmith Jacques-Antoine Courbin.

[70] On the first floor landing is a bas-relief, placed between the two windows, depicting a Medusa head "seeming to forbid access to intruders",[59] and completed in 1765 by Honoré Guibert,[58] who executed all the sculptures in the Petit Trianon.

[65][91] Like a courtyard, reinforcing the impression of exterior space, the interior windows overlooking both the small service flats and the mezzanine floor are integrated into a genuine façade in the same fine limestone as the building, with forged balustrades and bull's-eyes framed by oak leaf festoons carved into the stone.

[58] On 22 March 1768, Louis XV commissioned Jacques-Philippe Caresme to paint two pictures[note 24] to decorate the door-tops,[92] inspired by Ovid's Metamorphoses, on the instructions of the secretary of the Royal Academy, Charles-Nicolas Cochin, who "wanted the subject to fit in with the flowers".

[123] The lantern, commissioned by Marie-Antoinette in 1784 to replace Louis XV's old chandelier, was made by Pierre-Philippe Thomire, in lapis blue enamel, glass, and chased bronze enhanced by two-tone golds representing the bows and quivers of disarmed Love.

After unsuccessful attempts by Vivant Denon, Director General of Museums, to reassemble the original paintings, two pictures were installed on the panelling of the company lounge: Alexandre malade et son médecin Philippe by Jean Restout, and Le Jeune Pyrrhus à la cour du roi Glaucias by Hyacinthe Collin de Vermont.

The brothers Jules-Hugues and Jean-Siméon Rousseau created richly carved panelling in the arabesque style: the sculptures stand out in white against a background painted blue, in the manner of Wedgwood's cameos, a sign of France's new taste for Anglomania.

[note 37] Created in 1785 by Jacob to designs by the ornamentalist Dugourc and made in the Reboul and Fontebrune workshops in Lyon, it is upholstered in a blue lampas with a large white arabesque pattern depicting Cyclops.

When she moved to the Petit Trianon, the Duchess of Orléans had a set of gondola-shaped furniture brought in, comprising two armchairs, twelve chairs, and footstools, delivered in 1810 by the upholsterer Darrac for the music room in the French Pavilion.

[139] A "whimsical and confusing"[140] armchair was installed in the boudoir on the Duchess's instructions in 1837: in a Gothic style tending towards the Indonesian, it was made of blackened wood with twisted uprights and crosspieces and covered by the upholsterer Perrelle with an upholstered perse.

[note 42] These books, bound in full fawn or marbled calf morocco, bear the Queen's coat of arms on gold-free boards and the initials "CT" – "Château de Trianon" – surmounted by a crown, on the backs.

The small spiral staircase was also built in the 19th century,[155] by reducing the depth of the former maid's room, to provide a link with the attic flat of the King's eldest son, Ferdinand, Duke of Orléans, and his wife, Princess Hélène de Mecklembourg-Schwerin.

This room was taken over in 1772 by King Louis XV, who granted his inner chambers, located on the lower floor, to Madame du Barry, in an act of derogation from her royal status that seemed unthinkable at the time.

The desk was made of satinwood and amaranth veneer, decorated with gilded bronzes and gold braid, and covered with black velvet; sold for 600 livres at the time of the Revolution, although it had cost 4,500 sixteen years earlier, it was returned to its original position in 2002.

On the occasion of the 1867 Universal Exhibition, Napoleon III's wife organised a collection of "furniture, paintings and various objects with a genuine link to the memory of illustrious guests" from Trianon,[165] in homage to Marie-Antoinette, for whom she felt a sympathy bordering on devotion.