Palace of Fontainebleau

Fontainebleau is the palace where French kings lived for eight centuries, and it shows every one of them. It began as a hunting lodge in the forest, recorded under Louis VII in 1137, and nearly every ruler afterwards added a wing, a courtyard or a staircase, so that the buildings sprawl across several courts in a mix of styles that no single plan ever tidied up. Napoleon, who knew it well, called it the true home of kings and the house of the centuries. It became a national museum in 1927 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981.

The most important part is the work of Francis I, who from 1528 turned the old castle into a Renaissance palace, entered through the Porte Dorée. He brought Italian artists north, and in the Gallery of Francis I, decorated between 1533 and 1539, Rosso Fiorentino and Francesco Primaticcio combined painted panels with high stucco figures, garlands and cartouches in a way nobody had tried before. The result, the School of Fontainebleau, spread the Renaissance through France. The ballroom created under Henry II, with frescoes by Niccolò dell'Abbate, the Trinity Chapel, and the 80-metre Gallery of Diana made under Henry IV and later lined with books, carry the story on. Later centuries added the elegant little theatre that Hector Lefuel built for Napoleon III in the 1850s, and the Chinese Museum where Empress Eugénie displayed her collection of Asian art from 1867.

Some of the most dramatic moments of French history played out here. Between 1812 and 1814 Pope Pius VII was held at Fontainebleau as Napoleon's prisoner, and in April 1814 Napoleon himself abdicated in the palace. On 20 April he took leave of the soldiers of the Old Guard in the great entrance courtyard, the former Cour du Cheval Blanc, where the double horseshoe staircase rebuilt under Louis XIII by Jean Androuet du Cerceau makes one of the most theatrical entrances of any French palace. Outside, the gardens run from the Grand Parterre, which Le Nôtre and Le Vau enlarged in the 1660s, to the four-hectare Carp Pond and a romantic English garden, with the great forest of Fontainebleau beyond.

Getting there

The palace stands in the centre of Fontainebleau, about 55 km southeast of Paris. The nearest airport is Paris-Orly (ORY), about 44 km away. Mainline trains from Paris Gare de Lyon, heading towards Montargis, Montereau or Laroche-Migennes, stop at Fontainebleau-Avon, where bus line 1 towards Les Lilas runs to the Château stop.