A pair of silk slippers believed to have been worn by Marie-Antoinette, the wife of French monarch Louis XVI, sold at auction for 62,460 euros ($82,025) here on Wednesday.

The size 36-and-a-half (six) slippers, green with ornate pink bands across them and featuring a silk bow, had been expected to sell for between 8,000 and 10,000 euros.

Marie-Antoinette, best known for her "let them eat cake" remark about hungry protesters during the French revolution, was given the slippers by a member of her court, Alexandre-Bernard Ju-Des-Rets, in 1775.

That was 18 years before she died at the guillotine in the terror that followed the revolution.

A small piece of fabric said to come from the last dress the Austrian-born royal wore before being imprisoned sold for 6,121 euros, twice the estimated value.