Chateau de Fontainebleau

I am on the last leg of my trip to France but that doesn’t mean that I won’t be going out and visiting places. Immediately after arriving in Paris, I dumped my bags at the hotel and head to the train station for Fontainebleau. The town of Fontainebleau is the site of a UNESCO World Heritage site called Chateau de Fontainebleau. As you can tell from the name, it is a chateau. Back then the term chateau implies the house of someone of nobility. One of the most famous chateaux in France is Chateau de Versailles, which is obviously no mere house. This is the same for the Chateau de Fontainebleau. I guess in English, it would be more appropriate to call it a palace.

I went into the palace thinking that this is another ones of those palaces which are associated with Napoleon. This trip was filled with various places which have some relation to Napoleon including champagne makers. I’m not complaining, but it is just strange that I happened to visit all these Napoleon related places at the same time. I was aware that this palace has strong associations with the former emperor, but I incorrectly assumed that he commissioned the building of the palace. Indeed, the palace was already in place centuries before Napoleon, albeit not in its present form. The current palace was built in separate phases. One for each side of the square.

[xmlgm {http://www.worldwanderings.net/kml/ChateaudeFontainebleau.kmz} zoom=19]