You’ve visited the Louvre, Notre Dame, Sainte-Chapelle. You’ve been to Versailles EuroDisney and perhaps even made a trip to the chateaus of the Loire Valley… Is there anything else of the same caliber near Paris for those who love the classic ideals of French architecture and decorative arts?
The answer is a resounding yes:Château de Fontainebleau.
Far less familiar to many than showy Versailles,and drawing fewer than one-seventh the number of visitors who flock to the Sun King’s domain, definately not on the beaten EuroDisney trek either… Fontainebleau, 45 miles south of Paris, isn’t exactly unknown. But given its centuries of history at the center of the French monarchy, and the richness and variety of its buildings, inside and out, its relative obscurity is something of a mystery.
No site in France can compare as a royal residence: It predates the Louvre itself by 50 years, and Versailles by five centuries.
Nor is it a simple “chateau” as that term has come to designate a great country house held by a noble family. Fontainebleau’s singular attraction to an unbroken line of French kings spanning eight centuries was originally as a hunting lodge, perfectly situated at the edge of the ancient Forest of Fontainebleau — in effect, a royal game preserve.
But as each king took up residence for two months of hunting every fall, the relatively modest medieval structure was added to, then added to again, by the sovereigns who brought their court with them to the vast forest. They developed a succession of structures and styles that span many centuries and yet — magically, convincingly — cohere in a pleasing whole. And quite a few queens were happy ensconced in provincial regal splendor away from the formality and rigors of Versailles. That feather headed Viennese Pastry herself Queen Marie Antionette loved this place more than other residences and created a series of rooms that reflected her TikTok reality even before the Iphone was thought of... The Turkish Boudoir in the Château de Fontainebleau is open to the public for the first time in nearly 240 years following a seven-year project to restore the historic interior.
The bedroom, measuring 11 sq. m, and its two antechambers were made in 1777 for Queen Marie Antoinette in the opulent Orientalist style that was then fashionable. It had a chequered early history. Ransacked during the French Revolution, it was redecorated even more lavishly in 1806 by Joséphine de Beauharnais, Napoleon’s empress, who commissioned the noted Parisian furniture maker François-Honoré-Georges Jacob-Desmalter to create a bronze and mahogany suite of furniture.
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After the fall of the empire it was used sporadically as a bedroom for courtiers and officials before being closed off and abandoned for more than a century. The restoration, which began in 2008, aimed to recreate the 1806 First Empire interior because most of the original 18th-century furnishings had been sold or lost during the revolution
Some of France’s greatest architects — Philibert Delorme, Ange-Jacques Gabriel and André Le Nôtre among them — fashioned buildings, courtyards, interiors and elaborate grounds, adding to what they found while resisting the impulse to replace or destroy. What greets the visitor today is the single greatest assemblage over time of French architecture and décor still in its original state.
A word of caution: Fontainebleau is immense, and immensely varied. The roof alone has a surface area of five acres, and covers more than 1,500 rooms. The gardens and outer grounds extend over 230 acres. Rather than trying to “do it all” in a single day, plan your time depending on your interests, which parts of the chateau are open on the day of your visit, and the weather. In the morning, ask about the special guided tours available that day; they vary considerably, and can include Marie Antoinette’s Turkish boudoir, the imperial theater of Napoleon III, the private rooms of Napoleon I and Josephine, and others. Then arrange to take one of these tours (about an hour), and also pay the general admission of 11 euros (about $12) for a self-guided tour of the public rooms. Audio guides are available, and the staff is used to English-speaking visitors.
The chateau dates from 1137. Thomas Becket consecrated its original chapel in 1169, and Saint Louis himself (Louis IX, who was canonized by the church) founded a convent there in 1259 whose charge was to arrange for the ransom of Christian prisoners captured in Egypt by the forces of the Ayyubid sultan Turan-shah during the ill-fated Seventh Crusade
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However, most of what you’ll see dates from the early 1500s and later, when François I transformed the medieval fortress and hunting lodge into a royal palace, bringing the arts of the Italian Renaissance to northern France for their first full expression in a royal domain.
The result is a unique amalgam of Italian exuberance and artistic genius joined to French subtlety and classical restraint. The rooms that date from the 16th century are among the most breathtaking in France, but their richness can be overwhelming. Take your time, and look carefully: elaborate frescoes and paintings, sculpted frames, coffered ceilings, carved wall paneling, faceted doors. Every single part of the environment was imagined as part of a pleasing whole; your efforts will be rewarded when you begin to apprehend a decidedly French notion of elegance, suitable to its time.
The best-known room that François I left is the gallery that bears his name, a remarkable passage, 200 feet long by 20 feet wide, that leads from what is now the front of the chateau to its inner recesses. It is said that the king kept the key to this inner sanctum around his neck, allowing only a few visitors to lay eyes on it, and you can understand why when you see the space.
In all of France, there was nothing remotely resembling the effusions of splendor and carnal beauty that grace its walls. The work of Italian artists, including the architect Sebastiano Serlio and the master woodcarver Francesco Scibec da Carpi, the Galerie François I combines masterly frescoes, life-size stucco figures, elaborate wainscoting, delicate painting and gold leaf detailing.
A series of powerful frescoes by Rosso Fiorentino illustrates stories from antiquity, drawing allegorical parallels to François as a great king. His emblem, the salamander, is everywhere, as is his royal monogram, “F.” Each panel is surrounded by sumptuous stucco figures in white plaster that protrude from the wall, many of them the work of Francesco Primaticcio. The groupings mix female nudes, winged angels, satyrs, muscled heroes; the effect is both sensual and entirely captivating.Resist the inclination to walk through this unique space as if it were just a fancy hallway. Take in the entire effect, and consider the views across the pond to the forest in the middle distance. When you imagine what the effect must have been in a France only recently emerging from the Late Middle Ages, the décor coheres and is deeply satisfying. It is one of the defining works of what is now known as the First School of Fontainebleau, and a recognized masterpiece of the Renaissance in northern Europe.
The other 16th-century masterwork at Fontainebleau is the Salle de Bal, the ballroom, built by François’s son, Henri II, in 1558. Delorme designed the space, and Niccolo dell’Abbate and Primaticcio filled its massive bays with magnificent scenes of classical figures, resplendent in the rich hues of Italy. Its decoration is a startling mix of dramatic color (Italian frescoes again) and the exquisite reserve of the glorious woodwork on the ceiling and the walls and the vast patterned oak floor.
Perfectly proportioned at the heart of the chateau, it looks out on the cobbled Oval Courtyard on one side and, on the other, across colorful beds of flowering plants worked in symmetrical patterns called “broderie” (embroidery) to the ever-present forest
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The walls and ceiling bear the coats of arms of Henri II and his wife, Catherine de Medici. Also present in thinly disguised form is the monogram “D” for the king’s mistress of more than 20 years, Diane de Poitiers. When Henri was fatally wounded in a jousting accident, he languished for 11 days before dying. Diane was kept from him by the queen and exiled from court at the moment of his death.
The intrigues must have been endless, but the beauty of the surroundings makes you wonder if such considerations didn’t occasionally subside when the king was entertaining in this room. For centuries it has been used for ceremonies, parties and dinners. Even the Germans, who requisitioned the chateau for their army during World War II, used it for concerts by the Berlin Philharmonic at the beginning of their occupation of France. They then quickly sent film of the event back to the home front, showing another spoil of war to those in the fatherland.
The figure most closely associated with Fontainebleau in our day is among the last in the long line of monarchs who lived there, Napoleon Bonaparte. His golden “N” blazes from the iron gate at the entrance; in fact it was he who pulled down a wing of the chateau to open up the formal courtyard and make it more clearly the stately entrance to his palace.
The first is the Turkish boudoir, built for her in 1777 to the plans of Richard Mique, an Orientalist confection of a room set well away from the other royal apartments. Here she would entertain an inner circle of friends, enjoying her private retreat from court life. Napoleon’s Empress Josephine also loved this room, and had it refurnished after Marie Antoinette’s items were lost in the Revolution. You can visit it on private tours only.
The other private space, sometimes called the silver boudoir, was offered to the queen by her husband, Louis XVI, in 1787, a mere two years before France drove the Bourbons from the throne. It, too, is rich in its details, though the conceit here is classical antiquity rather than exoticism. Coming near the end of the self-guided tour of the royal apartments, it tends to be overlooked because it is small and not overly showy.
Don’t make that mistake. Its spare furnishings and architectural details concentrate a form of refinement and elegance in French taste that was about to be eclipsed by events, never to reappear.
The list of rooms and of the kings who built them is very long: Henri IV’s wing, as well as one of the few remaining intact indoor tennis courts (“Jeu de Paume”) in France; Napoleon I’s opulent throne room; Napoleon III’s jewel box of a theater; and many others.
Resolve to return and see them at your leisure. But don’t leave this extraordinary site without indulging yourself in a walk around the grounds. Wear sturdy shoes! Anyone who ventures across the cobbled courtyards wearing shoes with heels or stiff soles is asking for trouble
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Louis XIV’s Grand Parterre, the vast orderly gardens that are said to be the largest in Europe, provides the perfect vantage point for looking back at the long and irregular mass of the chateau’s linked buildings. At once you see how a form of grandeur can develop not only from a unified vision in a single age, as at Versailles or Chambord, but also can evolve as an accretion of architectural detail over time, both varying and enriching the overall effect. This is part of Fontainebleau’s particular genius.
On the other side of the distant wall of buildings lies a small hidden garden that epitomizes another of the chateau’s facets, this one less grand, more mysterious and unapologetically feminine: the Garden of Diana. Its scope is intimate and lovely, its meandering paths the opposite of formal symmetry and rumblings of glory. Pots of cascading red and purple petunias surround the fountain in summer, maples and willows grace the asymmetric stretches of perfect lawn, and mature pines flank the edges of the garden.
At the focal point sits a fountain that could only be French, over which Diana the Huntress presides. Her bronze likeness, set above a stone basin, pulls an arrow from the quiver as she strides forward, a small deer bounding at her side. Four hounds and four stag heads are arranged above the pool. A sense of the tutelary spirit prevails — not just of the hunt, but of the ancient forest itself. This, too, is Fontainebleau. Walk those paths and see for yourself. As you depart Fontainbleu heading back to Gay Olde Paree it is impossible to not feel the afterglow of beauty design and history…Luckily you will be back one day.
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Wonderful reading!