Supporters of former President Trump, outraged that FBI agents conducted a search Monday at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, were particularly incensed to learn that agents had gained access to his private quarters, including Melania Trump’s “Versailles Master Bedroom.”
“Once inside the air-conditioned, white marble-clad private quarters, agents fanned out to search every room, while shocked staff were instructed by Trump’s lawyers to unlock doors and provide the FBI access to every room, including the sumptuous Versailles Master Bedroom, renovated by Melania two years ago,” the New York Post reported. Agents reportedly also pawed through the former first lady’s wardrobe.
The U.S. Justice Department hasn’t publicly offered reasons for the search, but multiple people familiar with the investigation said it appeared to focus on retrieving boxes of classified material that Trump allegedly brought with him to Mar-a-Lago, his private Florida club and residence, when he left the White House, the New York Times said.
Whatever the reasons for the search, and however much it signals a major escalation in the various investigations into the final stages oof Trump’s presidency, the surprise raid has also renewed focus on the former real estate magnate’s opulent 20-acre property and, in particular, that “Versailles master bedroom.”
What could the Versailles master bedroom in Mar-a-Lago look like? And how much would Melania Trump’s decorating scheme borrow from the original, the queen’s bedchamber at the Palace of Versailles, west of Paris?
Queen’s bedchamber in the grand appartement de la reine of #Versailles. #queen #bedchamber pic.twitter.com/oTi4f0uXP9
— Geri Walton (@18thCand19thC) October 30, 2017
The opulent bedchamber was famously occupied by Marie Antoinette and two queens before her, but Marie Antoinette’s extravagance is one reason the French public turned against her and organized their revolution. On the morning of Oct. 6, 1789, she had to use one of her bedchamber’s side doors to escape rioters who invaded her private apartment.
Trump and Melania share a fondness for the gilded flamboyance of Louis XIV, the Sun King, who expanded Versailles from a small château into a palace between the late 1600s and the early 1700s.
As the Trumps showed with their Trump Tower penthouse, you seemingly can never have too much gold in your décor, with an abundance of gold-leaf chairs, walls and ceilings. Trump Tower also is filled with marble floors, crystal chandeliers and Greek columns.
The inspiration for the 114-room Mar-a-Lago, built by Post cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post in the 1920s, was a Venetian palace, with Spanish, Moorish and Portuguese design flourishes, the Palm Beach Post reported. It rose on a barrier island between a lagoon and the Atlantic, and is decked out with black-and-white marble from a castle in Cuba and 36,000 Spanish tiles, some dating to the 15th century, the New York Times reported.
Despite Mar-a-Lago’s Southern European influence, Donald and Melania Trump have tried to keep the spirit of Versailles alive at what became his “winter White House” while he was in office.
Shortly after Trump was inaugurated, the former president and first lady hosted a black-tie, “Vienna to Versailles” Red Cross Ball. France’s Ancien Régime came alive at the royal-themed gala, with servers and entertainers dressed up in gowns, white wigs and other getups that “looked like castoffs from Marie Antoinette and Co.’s closets,” the Washington Post reported.
It’s difficult to know how exactly how that influence extended to the master bedroom. The New York Post published a 2000 photo of a bedroom suite that looks more Venetian palace than 1700s French baroque. Getty Images said the photo was taken in 2000, before Trump married Melania in 2005, and identifies the room as Trump’s bedroom.
The New York Post reported Melania Trump remodeled the bedroom so that it could carry the “Versailles” label. It’s certainly easy to imagine her using the bedroom similarly to the way Marie Antoinette and her predecessors used their bedchamber.
Google Arts and Culture, which offers a virtual tour of the queen’s bedchamber at Versailles, said that it was the most important room in the queen’s apartments. It’s where she spent most of her time — sleeping (sometimes with the king), giving birth and receiving guests.
The centerpiece of the room is the queen’s gilded, canopied bed, draped in silks embroidered with flowers. The canopy is topped by an ornate carving of the Gallic Rooster, “le coq gaulois,” the unofficial national symbol of France.
When the FBI arrived to search Mar-a-Lago Monday, neither Melania nor Donald Trump had to leave the Versailles master bedroom through any side doors. The Trump family weren’t home, having decamped for the summer to his golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey.