The petit appartement de la reine is a suite of rooms in the Palace of Versailles. These rooms, situated behind the grand appartement de la reine, and which now open onto two interior courtyards, were the private domain of the Queens of France, Maria Theresa of Spain, Marie Leszczyńska, and Marie-Antoinette as well as the duchesse de Bourgogne as dauphine. The rooms in the petit appartement de la reine have been restored to the state that there left when Marie-Antoinette left Versailles on 6 October 1789.

At the completion of Le Vau’s enveloppe, the queen’s private rooms consisted of suite of five rooms that opened on the southern side of the cour de marbre and onto a small interior courtyard — at the time called the cour de la reine. In these rooms, Marie-Thérèse led her private and family life. Very little information survived about the décor or the arrangement of these rooms, owing largely to her early death in 1683 (Verlet 1985, p.

253). The most significant modifications to the petit appartement de la reine happened after the marriage of Louis XIV's grandson, the duc de Bourgogne, with Princess Marie-Adélaïde of Savoy in 1697. Shortly after the marriage, in 1699, a suite of three rooms was constructed – known as the appartement de nuit du duc de Bourgogne (Verlet 1985, p.

210). Theses rooms were created for the conjugal visits of the young duc with his wife. Consisting of a bedroom, cabinet, and garde-robe, this part of the petit appartement de la reine when constructed in 1699 divided the cour de la reine into the cour de Monseigneur to the west and the cour de Monsieur to the east (Verlet 1985, p.

256). These rooms also communicated with the appartement du roi and formed part of petit appartement de la reine and were used by the princess until her death in 1712. Under Marie Leszczyńska, the petit appartement de la reine underwent three distinct phases of modification: 1728-1731; 1737-1739; and, 1746-1748.

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