Shoe believed to have belonged to Marie-Antoinette
Three shoes conserved in the public collections tell the story of Marie Antoinette. They are a pink slipper covered with sequins and beads from her moment of glory as Queen of France, the supposed slipper she wore at the Tuileries at the time of her fall, and the shoe that she was said to have worn to her execution on October 16, 1793.
The queen’s slipper that was torn from the hands of invaders on August 10, 1792, by d’Ennecey de Champuis, who was defending the Tuileries palace as a Filles-Saint-Thomas grenadier, became the story of the heroic rescue of a shoe with hand-to-hand combat. Royal souvenirs were added to the collections in the early twentieth century. Representing thirty items in the museum’s collections, Marie Antoinette’s mementos include toiletries, fabrics, fans, jewelry, games that belonged to her, and locks of hair.
