Marie-Antoinette in Strasbourg
Cardinal Armand de Rohan, then Louis-René-Edouard de Rohan-Guéménée, bishop of Strasbourg, successively owned the palace.
In 1770, one of his nephews, Louis-Constantin de Rohan, hosted the young Austrian archduchess Marie-Antoinette, on her way to Versailles to meet her future husband Louis XVI. In Strasbourg she entered in France.
They raised a kind of “neutral” tent between France and Germany: inside, Marie, on the Austrian side, took her clothes off, “to leave things which linked her to her former country” said brothers Goncourt in their biography about the queen.
Whoosh, she put her clothes back on and entered in France, to become a woman and a queen. She was impressed, she was only 15…
In Strasbourg, she went to the cardinal’s palace.
Later, another Austrian turned up in the city with great pomp, in March 1810: Marie-Louise, on her way to marry a little Corsican! Emperor Napoleon I, of course.
Louis XV in Strasbourg
Before that, king Louis XV came in Strasbourg in 1774, with his wife. They saw the most beautiful parties!
To impress the king, people restored damage houses, and put sheets on ruined façades.
Houses next to the palace were hidden by a giant painted panel representing a castle with formal gardens… They even forced inhabitants of Strasbourg to wear smart suits when they went outside. What about the beggars and persons with a limp? The city sent them in jail for the occasion…