The first time songstress Tina Arena visited the Palace of Versailles was in 2005 where she sang at a Live 8 charity concert organised by Bob Geldof - it was 41 degrees and she was six months pregnant.
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This week she came face-to-face with some of the palace's treasures again, albeit in a far more comfortable setting.
Arena was in Canberra on Thursday to launch Versailles: Treasures from the Palace, the National Gallery of Australia's much-anticipated summer blockbuster exhibition.
The ambitious show has just over 130 items from the Palace of Versailles, which have been painstakingly flown to the southern hemisphere for a summer holiday.
It's the first time an extensive collection of this kind has left France, destined for one venue only, in Canberra.
Arena, who holds a French Knighthood of the Order of Merit and has lived in France for more than a decade, is the official ambassador for the exhibition.
"The first time I went to Versailles, I was gobsmacked, just the sheer scale of it. It's really visually overwhelming so ... your jaw is dropping," she said.
"I think [the exhibition] is a pretty good taste of what goes on there. But you can't ever compare with scale."
The exhibition is an opulent visual collection of cultural artefacts from three generations of French royals, replete with sights, sounds and even smells from the era. French master perfumer Francis Kurkdjian created an original scent based on King Louis XIV's favourite flower just for the exhibition, which fills the foyer as you walk in.
Celebrity gardener Paul Bangay also created a garden avenue at the gallery's main entrance as a homage to Versailles.
The star attraction is a 1.5-tonne marble sculpture of Latona, the legendary mother of Apollo and Diana, commissioned by Louis XIV to be the centrepiece of the main fountain in the Garden of Versailles.
But, being a muso, Arena's favourite piece is a relatively humble harp – the very one played by Marie Antoinette.
"Marie Antoinette's harp is pretty fab. The fact that she'd invite guests over and she'd compose things and play for them. Or when she was maybe peeved or upset, she'd go to her harp and she'd play," she said.
Versailles: Treasures from the Palace is showing at the National Gallery of Australia December 9 - April 17. Tickets available through ticketek.
