Cottage of Le hameau de la Reine

Le hameau de la Reine is a pseudo-imitative village in the back of the French garden of the Palace of Versailles. This is one of the small houses in the small village near the Petit Trianon and was built around 1785 at the request of Queen Marie Antoinette. Many blamed the court for a grotesque form of decadence and impetuosity; especially the queen was the target of criticism.

She had the village built to live there as a "farmer's wife". For example, she was far away from the court protocol to which she disliked.

The village has been preserved and counts a dozen houses including a water mill (who had no further function), a sheep barn and a farm. The queen kept the (perfumed) sheep and milk herself cows together with her ladies-in-waiting.
These decadent outbursts reached Paris, which was fodder for the revolutionaries.