Around Bois-le-Roi - Chateau Fontainebleau

19 Sep 2021

We’re preparing to head off on a four-day trip to the Loire Valley, home of many beautiful chateaus; I’ll write a post about that when we return. In the meantime (and afterward) I’ll try to post some pictures and scribblings about things we do around our home base, Bois-le-Roi. First up: Chateau Fontainebleau.

We love Chateau Fontainebleau. It has become our go-to place for a walk around when we have some time and don’t want to go far; it’s close-by, has beautiful gardens and buildings and a history that we love to contemplate.

A Little Background on Chateau Fontainebleau

The Chateau Versailles sits outside Paris, about 60 miles from here and is far more popular than Chateau Fontainebleau. We’ve never been there because 1.) it is jammed with tourists at even the slowest time of the year (and I mean “jammed,” as in hour-long waits to get into the famous Hall of Mirrors and then standing shoulder-to-shoulder with your fellow gawkers once you get in), and 2.) it has nothing close to the history of Chateau Fontainebleau. Versailles was built by one king, Louis XIV - the Sun King - and reflects his tastes and no one else’s.

Chateau Fontainebleau started as a hunting lodge, and has been added to, changed by, improved upon, and sometimes damaged by kings and emperors since the early-1500s; the roster includes Francis 1st, Henry II, Henry III, Charles IX, Henry IV, Louis XIII, Louis XIV, Louis XV, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, Napoleon, Louis XVIII, Charles X, Louis-Philippe and Napoleon III. That covers early-1500s to 1870, and some sign of just about every one of those rulers can be seen somewhere in the chateau.

We love just walking around the beautiful grounds of the chateau. There are miles of forest trails, an English garden, a garden dedicated to Diane de Poitier, Henry II’s mistress for many years, and a parterre, a wide open space with ponds and flower beds. We can walk for hours if we want and we always have in sight that magnificent chateau.

The Cour Ovale, center of the chateau. (Update: this picture was taken through a gate. I've always wanted to walk inside the Cour Ovale but it has never been open to the public. The people seen in this picture alerted me that maybe it was now open. In fact, if you buy a ticket to tour the chateau, it now allows entrance to the Cour Ovale. We did this later in this trip and, as I expected, we loved being in the Cour.)

*This pond is about a mile long, and has forests and paths all round it.*

What I love about this place. The area above the door has a salamander, the mark of Francois I, who was king from 1514-1547, while the door itself has a monogram added later by Louis XIV - the Sun King mentioned above as the creator of Versailles. He would have installed this door in the 1660s probably.

Now you know our favorite walking place. It’s about a fifteen minute drive from us. We’ve been a couple times so far, and plan to visit again, to take the chateau tour again (they keep adding things to it). We’ll be there for more walks, too; that’s for sure.