The Queen’s Dairy, or Laiterie de la Reine is a late 18th-century monument dedicated to Queen Marie Antoinette by her husband, King Louis XVI. Located in Château de Rambouillet, 50 km from Paris, the dairy was a place where people enjoyed tasting dairy products. Accordingly, the monument comprises two parts, namely the tasting room and the freshness room.
The façade of the Queen’s Dairy has a neoclassical design with an entrance framed by Tuscan columns. The medallion on the pediment depicts a cow suckling her calf, giving a hint about the structure’s function.
The tasting room is in a rotunda plan and covered by a coffered dome. The original room was all white, in harmony with milk. However, the state restored the floor and the table in 1807, at the behest of Napoleon. A door leads to the freshness room which immediately amazes its visitors with Pierre Julien’s sculpture “Amalthea and the Jupiter’s goat.” During Marie-Antoinette’s lifetime, water jets would run around the room including in the grotto. This would create a steamy atmosphere inside the room and keep the milk cool. There are also mythological reliefs decorating the walls of this room. One depicts Apollo guarding the flocks of Admetus and the other depicts Jupiter as a child among the Corybantes.
