On Saturday the weather was gorgeous (cloudy, but in the upper 60's!) so my friends and I decided to take the free weekend train to see the royal palace at Fontainebleau. It was about a 45 minute train ride from Paris, and then we arrived in the surprisingly large town where the palace is located. I actually liked this castle MUCH more than I liked Versailles - tons of rooms were open for us to walk through, there weren't nearly as many people, and the security guards weren't as uptight, which meant we got to wander and touch things that we probably shouldn't have. This palace was just another huge royal residence, but Napoleon I also visited it several times, so the museum inside has lots of Napoleonic elements.
First view of the courtyard.
This main outdoor staircase is the castle's most distinctive feature.
This diorama gives an overview of the complex.
Random giant vase used as a decoration. Unlike Versailles, this residence wasn't quite as much of a symbol of the monarchy. During the revolution, many items were still looted from the palace, but many of them were also returned afterward, which means that tons of furniture and artwork were on display.
Golden chess table.
One of the rooms was full of Napoleon's personal things that he took with him when he was on campaign. This box was labeled as "essential toiletries." Looks like a lot for wartime!
Napoleon's "necessary" knife kit. What could you possibly use that many knives for??
Just some fancy pants armor.
My friends and I couldn't figure out why one man needed so many swords, especially considering the fact that if you only have two hands you can only use a maximum of two swords at once. Common sense here people.
I really liked this room - the wallpaper was really cool (in this picture it looks kind of tacky, and I will admit that it was excessive, but I still liked it!). Also, that piece of furniture right there is actually a crib. Louis XIII was born in this château, as well as other minor members of the French aristocracy throughout the years, and one future queen of Spain.
Another fancy crib.
Just like Versailles, this château also had a gallery with busts of famous French men.
One of the rooms we got to see was called the "Gallery of Plates." Apparently when your house is that big you run out of things to decorate with, so the entire room had fancy plates hung on the walls as decorations.
This is a full view of the Plate Gallery. You can see there are also some paintings, and if you look closely you can see the little glass-covered panels with plates behind them.
A close-up of the paintings.
Before I visited the palace I read up on a few of the more interesting rooms. This gallery is known as the Francis I gallery, because King Francis I had it expanded and decorated to satisfy his specific tastes. And since he was king he had a bit of a problem understanding the concept of sharing, so once the room was finished he decided it would only be for his private use. When he was in residence here he wore the key around his neck at all times to make sure he could keep everyone else out.
View from one of the windows in the gallery.
The next four pictures are of one particularly pretty room in the palace, with close-ups of some of the decorations.
This room had a display of the fancy bronze and bejeweled pieces that the Spanish monarchy gave to the French monarchy as a gift at some point. All I could think of when i walked in was how this looks exactly like the table where they sing "Be Our Guest" in Beauty and the Beast.
Close-up of some of the pieces. Right after this the security yelled at me and said you weren't allowed to take pictures in this room, but I promise there was a candlestick holder that looked exactly like Lumiere and a clock who looked exactly like Cogsworth, the characters in Beauty and the Beast. I'm convinced this castle was the inspiration for the movie.
The next three pictures are of the ballroom! Now that the palace is a museum, they always play recordings of chamber music (string quartets, or maybe string ensemble) in this room. No one else was there, so of course we pretended to dance around for a while. Again, we were really happy the security was relatively lax. I definitely touched all the wood paneling in the walls, no one stopped me.
There's a balcony in this room! I can picture myself as a princess, walking in fashionably late and waving at everyone from my private balcony. I would run this town.
This is the ceiling to the smaller chapel in this palace.
As you can see, it's not actually small at all but it is relatively plain.
More pictures of cool but relatively unimportant rooms and furniture...
This is the personal bedroom of the queen. Over the years, several queens (and one empress) lived here.
The queen's study...
...and her desk!
We were all surprised when we stumbled upon this "throne room." The decorations are fancy, but the throne itself looks kind of small, right?
This is the king's personal bedroom - notice how much smaller his bed is than the queen's!
He also had a "small bedroom" right next door, in case he felt like sleeping in this bed instead. Not sure what the point of that is.
This was the first time I ever got to see an actual bathroom in one of these stupid châteaux! It's a bit hard to see, but those gold things on the wall are faucets of some sort, and that tiny thing is a tub!
At one point my friend Kate and I were lingering on a staircase, the security guards told us several times (in French) that the exhibit continued downstairs, we understood them but we realized we had lost our friend Kevin. When we went back to find him we discovered him standing in front of this giant clock, he was amazed by it. After we sassed him for the necessary amount of time, we asked why it was so interesting. It's impossible to really tell from the picture, but each of those little circles tells you something different. The clock tells you the hour of the day, day of the week, month of the year, zodiac sign, season, moon cycle, and several other things. We had to admit that it was pretty cool.
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