| Chateau Fontainebleau |
Website Links For Fontainebleau |
Information AboutChateau Fontainebleau |
|
The Royal Château of Fontainebleau (in the Seine-et-Marne '' Département '') is the largest of the French royal Château x and a pet project of Francis I Of France . The city of Fontainebleau has grown up around the remainder of the "Forest of Fontainebleau," a former royal hunting park. The chateau introduced to especially, and Germany, and eventually London. The château as it is today is the work of many monarchs, building on a structure of François I . The building is ranged round a series of courts. HISTORY The older château on this site was already used in the latter part of the 12th Century by Louis VII , for whom Thomas à Becket consecrated the chapel. Fontainebleau was a favourite residence of Philip Augustus and Louis IX . The creator of the present edifice was François I , under whom the architect Gilles Le Breton erected most of the buildings of the ''Cour Ovale'', including the ''Porte Dorée'', its southern entrance. The king also invited the architect Sebastiano Serlio to France, and Leonardo Da Vinci . The "Gallery of Francis I", with its frescoes framed in stucco by Rosso Fiorentino between 1522 and 1540 , was the first great decorated gallery built in France . Broadly speaking, at Fontainebleau the Renaissance was introduced to France. The Salle des Fêtes, in the reign of Henri II , was decorated by the Italian Mannerist painters, Francesco Primaticcio and Niccolo Dell’ Abbate . Benvenuto Cellini 's "Nymph of Fontainebleau," commissioned for the château, is at the Louvre . Another campaign of extensive construction was undertaken by King Henri II and Catherine De' Medici , who commissioned architects Philibert Delorme and Jean Bullant . To the Fontainebleau of François I and Henri II, King Henri IV added the Court that carries his name, the ''Cour des Princes'', with the adjoining ''Galerie de Diane de Poitiers'' and the "Oscar de Cerfs'', used as a library. A "second school of Fontainebleau" decorators, less ambitious and original than the first, evolved from these additional projects. Henri IV pierced the wooded park with a 1200m canal (which can be fished today) and ordered the planting of pines, elms and fruit trees. .]] Three hundred years later the Château had fallen into disrepair and during the French Revolution many of the original furnishings were stolen. What remained were sold, in the long Revolutionary sales of the contents of all the Royal châteaux, intended as a way of raising money for the nation and ensuring that the Bourbons could not return to their comforts. Nevertheless, within a decade Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte , began to transform the Château de Fontainebleau into a symbol of his grandeur, as an alternative to empty Versailles , with its Bourbon connotations. At Fontainebleau Napoleon bade farewell to his Old Guard and went into exile in 1814 . With modifications of the château's structure, including the cobblestone entrance wide enough for his carriage, Napoleon helped make the château the place that visitors see today. Fontainebleau was the setting of the Second Empire court of his nephew Napoleon III . of Russia and Christian VII Of Denmark , and so, under Napoleon was Pope Pius VII — in 1804 when he came to consecrate the emperor Napoleon, and in 1812 —1814, when he was Napoleon's prisoner. EXTERNAL LINKS |