Château de Fontainebleau

The Château de Fontainebleau stands at Place Charles de Gaulle in Fontainebleau, in the Seine-et-Marne department of the Île-de-France region about 55 kilometres south-east of Paris. It was a royal and imperial residence for around eight centuries, shaped by successive rulers from Francis I, who commissioned much of the Renaissance work, through to Napoleon, who refurbished it as his palace. The château is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and has over 1,500 rooms, of which a large number can be visited. Highlights include the Galerie François I, a long gallery decorated with frescoes and stucco by Rosso Fiorentino and Primaticcio that is a landmark of the Fontainebleau school, the lavish Ballroom, the Chapel of the Trinity, and the Napoleon I apartments, including the throne room and the small private rooms. The famous horseshoe staircase in the Cour du Cheval Blanc is where Napoleon bade farewell to his Old Guard in 1814. A separate Napoleon museum and a Chinese museum assembled for Empress Eugénie are also on the route. Outside, the formal gardens by André Le Nôtre, a large carp pond and a canal extend behind the château, and the surrounding Fontainebleau forest is a popular walking and climbing area. A visit usually lasts three to five hours with the gardens. The château receives far fewer visitors than Versailles, with crowds mostly on weekends and in summer; weekday mornings are calmest. The gallery is at its best in morning light, and the horseshoe staircase is most photogenic from the entrance courtyard. The town of Fontainebleau itself has cafés, restaurants and shops within a few minutes' walk of the château gates, and the forest, which was a royal hunting ground, offers marked trails, sandstone boulders popular with climbers and cycling routes. Guided tours and audio guides help to make sense of the layered building, where each ruler added or altered wings, courtyards and decoration across the centuries, giving the château a varied but coherent character.