FONTAINEBLEAU AND ITS FOREST
Of all the French royal palaces Fontainebleau is certainly the most interesting, despite the popularity and accessibility of Versailles. It is moreover the cradle of the French Renaissance. Napoleon called it the Maison des Siècles, and the simile was just.
After Versailles, Fontainebleau has ever held the first place among the suburban royal palaces. The celebrated "Route de Fontainebleau" of history was as much a Chemin du Roi as that which led from the capital to Versailles. Versailles was gorgeous, even splendid, if you will; but it had not the unique characteristics, nor winsomeness of Fontainebleau, nor ever will have, in the minds of those who know and love the France of monarchial days.
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Not the least of the charm of Fontainebleau is the neighbouring forest so close at hand, a few garden railings, not more, separating the palace from one of the wildest forest tracts of modern France.
The Forest of Fontainebleau is full of memories of royal rendezvous, the carnage of wild beasts, the "vraie image de la guerre," of which the Renaissance kings were so inordinately fond.
It was from the Palace of Fontainebleau, too, that bloomed forth the best and most wholesome of the French Renaissance architecture. It was the model of all other later residences of its kind. It took the best that Italy had to offer and developed something so very French that even the Italian workmen, under the orders of François I, all but lost their nationality. Vasari said of it that it "rivalled the best work to be found in the Rome of its time."
A charter of Louis-le-Jeune (Louis VII), dated at Fontainebleau in 1169, attests that the spot was already occupied by a maison royale which, according to the Latin name given in the document was called Fontene Bleaudi, an etymology not difficult to trace when what we know of its earlier and later history is considered.