Vivre À L'antique De Marie-Antoinette À Napoléon Ier

Exhibition at the Palais du Roi de Rome, Rambouillet, 5 - 31 March 2021

During the last three decades of the 18th century, a fascination arose among the European elite for the extraordinary discoveries revealed by the excavations of buried cities, Etruscan tombs and villas of the Roman Empire in Italy. The distant past suddenly resurfaced in the present, and architecture, furniture and everyday objects were reinvented in its image.

From Marie Antoinette to Napoleon, this exhibition catalogue explains how and why, at the dawn of the modern era, remote antiquity captured the imagination of sovereigns and their courts.