Louis Xvi, Marie-Antoinette Et La Révolution

Exhibition at the Archives nationales, Paris, 29 March - 3 July, then 30 August - 6 November 2023

A period of almost three years separated the end of the Ancien Régime from the collapse of the monarchy. Between 1789 and 1792, the royal family was forced to leave Versailles and its splendours, and lived under house arrest in Paris, at the Tuileries Palace. Rich in political events, this thousand-day episode is well represented in archives and iconography.

Louis XVI was no longer an absolute monarch, and revolutionary France had a constitution. Right next door to the palace, in the Assembly, the deputies worked hard to build this new regime through stormy debates. The feverishness of the street was palpable and, under popular pressure, outbreaks of violence multiplied in Paris. In Europe, foreign powers watched France with concern.

Through archive documents, engravings, works of art, objects and pieces of furniture from the Tuileries, this exhibition catalogue examines the daily life of the royal couple from their departure from Versailles for the Tuileries until the fall of the monarchy, Marie-Antoinette's secret correspondence with the Swedish Count Axel de Fersen and the intimacy of a château that has now disappeared.