Madame de Pompadour's Private Apartment

  Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour (1721-1764), was a woman of bourgeois origins, she did not descended from a family of the French nobility. In 1745, she had the good fortune to meet the king at a masked-ball organised in Versailles, where she managed to seduce the monarch with her beauty and her intelligence. He formalized her as his favorite, six months after their first meeting.
 Seven years later, the king and the marquise were no longer in love, but they kept a strong friendship. Jeanne-Antoinette even provided the king with young women, so that he would not choose a woman among these at Court. The king also sometimes asked for advises to her on state matters. He even kept her close to him, at the Palace. He bought for her the Hôtel d'Evreux, today known as the Presidential Palace de l'Elysée. While being the king's favorite, she used her influence to protect artists and writers (Voltaire, she permitted the publication of the two first volumes of L'Encyclopédie by Diderot and D'Alembert). 

Portrait en pied de la Marquise de Pompadour,
 by Maurice Quentin de La Tour, Musée de Louvre (RMN)

  In 1745, the king installed his lover in the apartment right above his own. This apartment hosted the monarch's previous favorite (Madame de Chateauroux). This small apartment offers an impressive view of the northern part of the gardens.

The stairs to access the apartment (photo by me)

View on the Northern Aisle, from the apartments of the Pompadour (photo by me)

  When I visited, luckily for me, the weather was incredible, the sun enterred joyfully in the rooms.
The apartment has been completely refurnished and redecorated few years ago, thanks to a generous sponsorship from a jewelry brand. These rooms are accessible with a special guiding tour focused on hidden apartments of the castle.

Cabinet of the marquise (photo by me)

Bedchamber (photo by me)

photo by me

photo by me

Madame Husset's (marquise's maid) room, a very small room usually closed to the public (photo by me)

Further informations:

* Article about the apartment on the site of the Palace
* Gallery from the Facebook account of the Palace
* Le Bal Des Ifs, by Franck Ferrand, an interesting biography of Madame de Pompadour by famous French writer and Versailles specialist Franck Ferrand. I found it easy to read and to understand all the mechanisms of the mid. 18th century French court.
* Article about the marquise on Encyclopaedia Universalis by Louis Trenard (in French)
* Article about the marquise on Encyclopaedia Britannica by Nancy Mitford (in English)
* Extract from the show Secrets d'Histoire about the marquise (in French)