Was this really Marie Antoinette’s house? Who was she anyway?

Abstract eng:
The proposed paper analyses several issues surrounding the process of heritage commodification, in the case of Petit Trianon - part of the Versailles Palace UNESCO heritage site. Petit Trianon has recently been subjected to a restoration and re-denomination as the Estate of Marie Antoinette, which was designed to strengthen its identity as home of the last Queen of France. A series of events and managerial decisions related to the restoration, has led to increased commodification of the heritage of Petit Trianon and of Marie Antoinette’s highly controversial historical character. Despite the heritage authenticity values embodied in Petit Trianon’s restoration narrative from the curatorial perspective, the managerial goal of attracting increased visitor numbers actually perpetuates, albeit unintentionally, a film-generated image, which emerged from Sofia Coppola’s Marie-Antoinette. Released in 2006 at Cannes Festival, Coppola's film benefited from an extremely intense promotional campaign in France, the US and Japan, due to the American film director’s notoriety and the fascination for Marie Antoinette felt by these countries’ nationals. Versailles Palace’s management officials seized the opportunity created by the film’s highly anticipated release, to orchestrate the extensive restoration of Petit Trianon. This was completed in 2008. The proposed paper focusses on the effects of the managerial strategies on the perception of the site and its once owner, by the majority of French, American and Japanese visitors, without ignoring however the cultural conditioning of each of the aforementioned nationals. The analysis uses as methodological background its author’s fieldwork research and evidence gathered during a total period of 15 months at Versailles, whilst drawing on the theoretical approaches from the work of John L. Caughey (1984). The study’s relevance to the investigation of the relationship between heritage and cultural tourism, within the context of heritage governance for sustainability in particular, lies in the actuality of postmodern commodification of heritage seen as a result of economic pressures. Without suggesting viable alternatives to this situation, the paper aims nevertheless to contribute in raising awareness of the dangers posed by commodification to authenticity, where authenticity is seen as adding value and hence is an element crucial to management for sustainability in cultural tourism.

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