Castle of Fontainebleau: A French Royal Palace from Medieval Fortress to Imperial Residence
Site at a Glance
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- France
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- French
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Palace
On this page41 sections
History
The Castle of Fontainebleau in Fontainebleau, France, is a French royal residence whose medieval origins were transformed into a Renaissance palace during the sixteenth century. The earliest known reference to a royal residence here appears in a charter issued by Louis VII in 1137. Its foundation date remains uncertain, although a first fortified building may have been erected under Philip I or Louis VI after the Gâtinais entered the French royal domain in 1068. The site probably began as a modest fortified hunting lodge among marshes and gradually became one of the principal residences of the French monarchy.
Medieval royal residence
Louis VII established and endowed a chapel at Fontainebleau in 1169. Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury who had taken refuge in France, consecrated it to the Virgin Mary and Saint Saturnin. In 1191, Philip II celebrated his return from the Third Crusade at the residence. These events connected Fontainebleau with both the religious life and the public ceremonies of the medieval monarchy.
Louis IX enlarged the castle and used it as a hunting residence. In 1259, he installed Trinitarians, a medieval religious order associated with charitable work and the redemption of captives, to serve a hospital-monastery within the enclosure. Foundations belonging to their chapel and conventual buildings survive near the present Trinity Chapel.
Fontainebleau also became closely associated with the Capetian dynasty. Philip IV was the first French king born there, in 1268, and had royal apartments arranged at the castle in 1286. He was also the first king to die there, in 1314, after falling from a horse. The residence later hosted royal marriages, diplomatic visitors, and important court activities. Among these were the marriage contract of John II and Bonne of Luxembourg in 1332 and the presence of Charles V’s library.
The castle was abandoned for a period during the Hundred Years’ War, the prolonged conflict between the English and French crowns that shaped the movement of the French court during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The court moved toward the Loire and Bourges, but Charles VII returned to Fontainebleau after the liberation of Paris and the Île-de-France in 1436. He also considered the site healthier than some other royal residences.
Francis I and the Renaissance palace
Francis I replaced most of the medieval castle with a Renaissance palace while retaining the medieval keep and part of the northern defensive wall. The Renaissance was a European movement that revived Greek and Roman artistic models, and at Fontainebleau these influences were combined with established French traditions. Francis chose the residence for hunting and made it his preferred royal home, bringing the court there and inviting Italian artists to help create what he imagined as a French “New Rome.”
The building campaign involved successive works supervisors, including Florimond de Champeverne, Pierre Paule, Salomon des Herbaines, and Pierre des Hôtels. Gilles Le Breton also worked on the project. The precise roles of Sebastiano Serlio, Gilles Jamin, Gracieux Jamin, François Jamin, Rosso Fiorentino, and Girolamo della Robbia remain partly uncertain, but Italian and French artists together established a new artistic language at the court. Their collaboration produced the first School of Fontainebleau, which strongly influenced French art.
Francis I formed an important library at Fontainebleau, an early foundation for what became the French national library. He collected antiquities and works by Italian masters, commissioned mythological decorations, and ordered bronze casts based on ancient Roman sculpture. The palace was also a setting for international diplomacy. James V of Scotland was received there in 1536, and Charles V visited in 1539.
Expansion under the Valois kings
Henry II continued the Renaissance expansion. In 1548, he commissioned Philibert Delorme to inspect and direct works at the residence. The ballroom and further chapel works were completed or substantially developed during his reign. Fontainebleau was also a place of dynastic continuity. Most of the children of Henry II and Catherine de Medici were born there, including the future kings Francis II and Henry III.
After Henry II’s death in 1559, Catherine de Medici continued the building and decoration during the reigns of Francis II, Charles IX, and Henry III. Primaticcio became superintendent of the royal buildings, while Niccolò dell’Abbate, Jean Bullant, François Sannat, Tristan de Rostaing, and Baptiste Androuet du Cerceau contributed to the works. In August 1560, Fontainebleau hosted a meeting of notables concerning the kingdom’s religious crisis and the summoning of the Estates General, a representative assembly of the clergy, nobility, and commoners of France.
Henry IV and the Bourbon court
Under Henry IV, Fontainebleau was substantially enlarged between 1593 and 1609. The king regularized the Oval Court, developed the Cour des Offices, added the Baptistère Gate, expanded the gardens, and created new galleries and a jeu de paume, an indoor court for the racket game that preceded modern tennis. The expanded palace could accommodate nearly 1,000 people.
A second School of Fontainebleau decorated the interiors during this period. Its artists included the French and Flemish painters Martin Fréminet, Jean de Hoey, and Ambroise Dubois. Their work extended the artistic tradition created under Francis I while giving the interiors a new character during the early Bourbon monarchy.
Fontainebleau continued to serve as a setting for royal births, marriages, arrests, diplomatic negotiations, and court ceremonies under the Bourbons. Louis XIII completed works inherited from Henry IV, received foreign princes, and held marriage-related and diplomatic events at the castle. In 1633, 49 knights of the Order of the Holy Spirit were promoted there.
Louis XIV to Louis XVI
Louis XIV preferred Versailles but retained Fontainebleau as a symbol of the French monarchy and visited it regularly. He commissioned a theatre and undertook major garden works with André Le Nôtre and Louis Le Vau. The Grand Dauphin was born at Fontainebleau in 1661, and the opening of Nicolas Fouquet’s trial took place there in 1664. The palace also hosted royal marriages and treaties. On 18 October 1685, Louis XIV signed the edict revoking the Edict of Nantes, ending the legal framework that had granted French Protestants a degree of religious toleration.
The residence was also the scene of a notorious diplomatic scandal. Christina of Sweden, who had formerly been queen, stayed at Fontainebleau in 1656 and again from 1657 to 1658. During her second stay, on 10 November 1657, Giovanni Monaldeschi was assassinated in the castle on her orders for treason.
Louis XV married Marie Leszczynska at Fontainebleau in 1725 and commissioned new apartments, a theatre, and alterations by Ange-Jacques Gabriel. Louis XVI maintained the traditional annual stay, giving the palace its reputation as an “autumn palace.” Fontainebleau hosted treaties involving France, Spain, Austria, the Netherlands, and England. In 1752, it was also the setting for the first performance of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Village Soothsayer.
Revolution, Napoleon, and the nineteenth century
During the French Revolution, the palace was stripped of its furniture. It was occupied by the Central School of Seine-et-Marne, served as the barracks of the Special Military School from 1803 to 1808, and was later used as a prison. A fire that began in the orangery in January 1789 damaged the chapel and destroyed the Dauphin’s apartment.
Napoleon I revived Fontainebleau from 1804, refurnished it, established his court there, and created 40 principal apartments. He used the palace for political decisions, theatre and opera performances, and the confinement of Pope Pius VII. The pope was secretly transferred to Fontainebleau in 1812 and remained imprisoned there for 19 months. Under pressure, he signed the Concordat of Fontainebleau on 25 January 1813.
Fontainebleau became the setting for the final days of Napoleon’s reign. Under pressure from Marshals Ney, Berthier, and Lefebvre, he abdicated on 4 April 1814. On 20 April, he bid farewell to his Old Guard in the Court of Honor, which later became known as the Cour des Adieux. He returned briefly during the Hundred Days, arriving on 20 March 1815.
Louis XVIII and Charles X stayed at Fontainebleau after Napoleon. Louis-Philippe initiated major restorations and redecoration, and the palace hosted the marriage of Ferdinand-Philippe d’Orleans and Helene of Mecklenburg-Schwerin in 1837. In 1846, a forest guard attempted to assassinate Louis-Philippe in the palace park.
During the Second Empire, the regime of Napoleon III, Fontainebleau again became a court residence. Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie created new apartments and installed the Chinese Museum. Its collections included objects from the 1860 Franco-British expedition against China and gifts from Siamese ambassadors received in 1861. The older theatre burned in 1856, and a new theatre was built for the empress from 1857.
War, museum, and conservation
Prussian forces occupied the palace from September 1870. Frederick Charles of Prussia and his staff used it from 6 to 18 March 1871. From November 1871, some dependencies housed the School of Applied Artillery and Engineering after its removal from Metz. During the Third Republic, Fontainebleau occasionally served as a presidential residence and hosted foreign heads of state.
The upper floors of the Belle Cheminée wing had been damaged by the 1856 fire and were reconstructed during the late 1920s and 1930s with Rockefeller funding. The palace became a national museum in 1927, while the American Conservatory and American schools of art and music were established there during the 1920s. German forces occupied Fontainebleau from June to November 1940 and again from May to October 1941. After the war, parts of the palace housed Allied military headquarters, including Allied Forces Central Europe, until 1966.
André Malraux directed a general restoration campaign from 1964 to 1968. The Ministry of Culture acquired the former royal stables in 2006 and began their restoration. Work on the Napoleon III theatre started in 2007 and was completed in 2014, conserving as much original fabric as possible without intending to return the theatre to regular performances.
The palace and its park were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1981. UNESCO World Heritage status recognizes places considered to have cultural or natural value of international importance. The buildings and estate also received successive French historic-monument protections beginning in 1862, with further protections in 1913, 1930, 2008, and 2009. The public administrative establishment responsible for the palace was created by decree in 2009.
The Napoleon I Museum opened in the Louis XV wing in 1986. In 2021, an exhibition marking the bicentenary of Napoleon I’s death brought more than 200 works from Fontainebleau and other French and foreign museums to the palace. In 2022, the establishment joined the European Royal Residences Network. In 2015, professional thieves robbed the Chinese Museum and took approximately 15 valuable objects, including a replica of the Siamese crown presented to Napoleon III, a Tibetan mandala, and an enamel chimera from the reign of the Qianlong Emperor.
Remains
Medieval core and principal courtyards
Fontainebleau is a large palace complex that combines medieval, Renaissance, classical, and nineteenth-century elements. It contains approximately 1,530 rooms, 63,500 square metres of floor area, about five hectares of built space, five principal courtyards, two hectares of roofs, a park, and three gardens. Its collections include approximately 40,000 movable objects, with furniture, paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts dating from the sixth to the nineteenth centuries.
Saint Louis Donjon
The medieval castle consisted of a square keep surrounded by walls, with a courtyard, curtain walls, towers, and a fortified gate. The surviving keep, known as the Saint Louis Donjon, stands in the Oval Court. It is a square tower with a pavilion roof and two large lateral chimneys. Its medieval construction uses rubble stone, dressed-stone corner blocks, stone window surrounds, and a tiled roof. A vaulted straight stair survives within the northern wall, while traces of twelfth-century curtain walls and fifteenth-century buildings remain at ground level.
Oval Court
The Oval Court preserves the rounded-octagonal arrangement of the medieval fortress. Sandstone facades and a continuous gallery supported by columns partly define the court. Henry IV enlarged it eastward and closed it with the Baptistère Gate. The court opens south toward the Carp Pond and is bordered by the Queen Mothers wing, the Gros Pavilion, the Francis I wing, and the Belle Cheminée wing.
Cour du Cheval Blanc
The Cour du Cheval Blanc, also called the Court of Honor or Cour des Adieux, is rectangular and developed over five centuries as a service court, parade court, and ceremonial space. Its western wing, the Wing of Ferrara, was demolished and replaced by an ornamental grille and gate designed by Maximilien Joseph Hurtault in 1808.
Horseshoe staircase and pavilion wing
The horseshoe staircase was first built by Philibert Delorme in 1550 and rebuilt by Jean Androuet du Cerceau between 1632 and 1634. Its two curved parallel flights contain 46 steps and provide both a ceremonial entrance and a route for carriages. Covering more than 440 square metres, the staircase underwent a fundamental restoration before reopening in May 2022.
The staircase wing contains five two-storey pavilions joined by lower sections. These are the Arms Pavilion and Clock Tower, the Organ Pavilion, the central Horseshoe Vestibule Pavilion, the Poeles Pavilion, and the Gros Pavilion. The Arms Pavilion combines dressed stone with rubble masonry, retains carved woodwork installed by Ambroise Perret in 1559, and has an upper storey dating from the eighteenth century.
Entrances and palace wings
Portico of Serlio
The Portico of Serlio opens onto the Oval Court. Built of dressed stone and sandstone, it probably dates from 1531, before Sebastiano Serlio arrived at Fontainebleau. Henry IV moved the structure, and it was reconstructed in 1893. Its present form is a two-level triumphal structure with three arches on each level.
Golden Gate
The Golden Gate, or Porte Dorée, dates from 1528 and served as the principal entrance until Henry IV opened the Baptistère Gate. It combines rendered rubble masonry with grey sandstone pilasters, surrounds, Renaissance triangular pediments, and a pavilion roof that retains Gothic features. Francis I’s salamander appears on the tympanum, while the interiors contain paintings by Primaticcio and his workshop.
Baptistère Gate
The Baptistère Gate, also called the Dauphine Gate, was built under Henry IV on the site of an earlier entrance. Its name commemorates the baptism of Louis XIII and his sisters in 1606. The triumphal entrance has rusticated sandstone, an upper arcade, and a polygonal dome. Sculptures of Victories support Henry IV’s arms, and copies of antique busts occupy niches inside.
Ministers’ Wing
The Ministers’ Wing, also called the Lower Wing, was begun around 1530 and closes the northern side of the Cour du Cheval Blanc. It is built of brick, sandstone, and rubble, with a long one-storey facade, curved-pediment dormers, and a central two-storey pavilion bearing Francis I’s salamander and royal cipher. Successive restorations and reconstructions continued until 1878. The wing now houses administrative services.
Renaissance galleries and chapels
Francis I Gallery
The Francis I Gallery was built between 1528 and 1530 as a covered passage approximately 60 metres long and 6 metres wide. Originally open on both sides, it linked the king’s apartments with the Trinity Chapel and combined circulation with political display. Rosso Fiorentino decorated it between 1535 and 1539 with frescoes, paintings, stucco, and carved walnut paneling by Francesco Scibec da Carpi.
Its decoration includes royal monograms, mythological and allegorical scenes, the Danae, the Nymph of Fontainebleau, and the celebrated Royal Elephant, probably an image of Francis I. Louis XVI doubled the wing in 1786, adding apartments and false windows while blocking its northern opening.
Francis I wing
The Francis I wing originally contained three bathrooms and four small salons decorated with stucco, grotesques, and frescoes, some associated with Primaticcio. These rooms were destroyed in 1697 and replaced by a new apartment. Napoleon’s small apartments were installed in this area between 1808 and 1810, retaining some Louis XV paneling alongside Empire furniture.
Belle Cheminée wing
The Belle Cheminée wing was built between 1565 and 1570 for Catherine de Medici, to designs associated with Primaticcio. It contained a large room and an elaborate fireplace that was later destroyed or dispersed, and the wing subsequently became the site of an eighteenth-century theatre. Its upper levels were damaged by the 1856 fire and reconstructed during the twentieth century.
Trinity Chapel
The Trinity Chapel developed from the former Trinitarian convent church. It was rebuilt under Francis I and Henry II, vaulted under Henry IV, completed under Louis XIII, and enriched under Louis XIV, Louis XV, and Louis XVI. The building is a double chapel, with a lower space for servants and officers and an upper space for the sovereign and royal family. The lower chapel occupies the site of the twelfth-century chapel.
The chapel contains paintings by Martin Fréminet, an altar and multicolored marble pavement made by Francesco Bordoni in 1633, a 1554 choir screen and organ gallery by Francesco Scibec da Carpi, and an altarpiece by Jean Dubois the Elder from 1642. The original altar and tabernacle were transferred to the parish church during the Revolution. The organ by François-Henry Clicquot dates from 1774. Napoleon I converted the upper chapel into a library, and it remained a library until the books were moved to the Diana Gallery.
Ballroom
The Ballroom, also called the Henry II Gallery, is approximately 30 metres long and 10 metres wide, with an area exceeding 300 square metres. It began as a loggia, an open-sided gallery or passage, facing the Oval Court and gardens, and was transformed into a grand reception hall under Francis I and Henry II. Primaticcio designed its frescoes, which were executed by Niccolò dell’Abbate and his workshop and draw largely on Greco-Roman mythology.
The room has a coffered ceiling formed from recessed panels, a decorated tribune or elevated gallery, a marquetry floor, and a monumental fireplace designed by Philibert Delorme. The fireplace rests on two bronze satyrs, recreated in Rome in 1966 after the originals were destroyed during the Revolution. The frescoes and woodwork were restored in 1834, 1858, 1865, 1883 to 1885, and 1963 to 1966.
Royal apartments and historic collections
Royal Apartments wing
The Royal Apartments wing was built in the sixteenth century over the medieval plan and follows the oval form of the Oval Court. Catherine de Medici doubled the building adjoining the Garden of Diana in 1565, increasing the number of apartments. The interiors were repeatedly modified between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Queen Mothers wing
The Queen Mothers wing was built between 1558 and 1566 and contains apartments associated with Catherine de Medici, Marie de Medici, Anne of Austria, and Pope Pius VII. Its rooms include the Louis XIII and Louis XV apartments, whose decorations and furnishings belong to successive periods from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries.
Gallery of Diana
The Gallery of Diana is approximately 80 metres long and 10 metres wide. It originally linked the queen’s apartments with the cabinet of the aviary. Its seventeenth-century decoration concerned Diana, Apollo, and royal victories. During the Revolution, the gallery became a prison. Napoleon I and the Restoration brought restoration work, Louis-Philippe used it as a banquet hall, and it became a library in 1858. It now contains approximately 16,000 volumes and a globe made for Napoleon I in 1810.
Gallery of the Stags
The Gallery of the Stags dates from the early seventeenth century and is approximately 74 metres long and 7 metres wide. Its decoration includes 43 plaster stag heads with natural antlers, hunting motifs, and 13 painted views of royal residences under Henry IV. The gallery also contains casts of ancient sculptures brought from the Louvre in 1967, including the Laocoon, the Venus of Cnidus, the Apollo Belvedere, Hercules Commodus, the Sleeping Ariadne, and a Diana with a Doe.
Gros Pavilion and Chinese Museum
The eighteenth-century Gros Pavilion replaced the Poeles Pavilion in 1750. Designed by Ange-Jacques Gabriel, it has a mansard slate roof with oval openings. The Louis XV wing contains the Napoleon I Museum, which occupies approximately 15 rooms and presents portraits, arms, decorations, ceramics, clothing, imperial furnishings, and personal objects.
Empress Eugenie installed the Chinese Museum on the ground floor of the Gros Pavilion in 1863. Its collections include Chinese and Tibetan objects, gifts from Siam, lacquer panels, porcelains, jades, enamels, weapons, jewellery, a gilded Tibetan stupa, and a replica of the Siamese royal crown. The rooms were restored in 1991.
Napoleon III Theatre
The Napoleon III Theatre was built from 1857 at the western end of the Louis XV wing, to plans by Hector Lefuel. It contains approximately 400 places, including about 100 standing places, in a space roughly 45 by 15 metres. The theatre retains its Empire-style decoration and furniture, original stage machinery, and around 20 stage sets, some dating from the reign of Louis XV. Restoration from 2007 preserved much of the original fabric.
Other state rooms preserve historic interiors and furnishings associated with the monarchy and Empire. These include Empire apartments for Napoleon I, restored Louis XVI rooms, the throne room, the Council Chamber, the apartments of Josephine and Marie-Louise, and rooms associated with Marie-Antoinette, Empress Eugenie, and other royal residents. Furnishings include Napoleon’s throne, imperial beds and desks, the 1774 Clicquot organ, Sèvres porcelain, Gobelins and Beauvais tapestries, Boulle furniture, and paintings and sculptures connected with the palace.
Service courts and sporting building
Cour des Offices
The Cour des Offices, also called the Cour des Cuisines, was built by Henry IV between 1606 and 1609. It is a rectangular service court enclosed by three wings of sandstone, brick, and rubble. The entrance lies between two sandstone herms, sculptural supports with human- or animal-headed forms, made by Gilles Guérin in 1640.
Jeu de paume
The seventeenth-century jeu de paume north of the palace was built under Henry IV around 1600. A fire destroyed it in the eighteenth century, after which it was immediately rebuilt on the same site.
Gardens, waterworks, and ornamental features
The estate includes a park described in broader terms as approximately 130 hectares, while the principal park is also described as approximately 80 hectares. Its gardens preserve successive royal plans, from the formal arrangements of Francis I and Henry IV to later transformations under Louis XIV, Napoleon I, Louis-Philippe, and the Second Empire.
Grand Canal and Garden of Diana
Henry IV created the Grand Canal between 1606 and 1609. It is approximately 1.2 kilometres long, about 37 metres wide, and has an average depth of 3 metres. Its volume is approximately 140,000 cubic metres, and three aqueducts feed it from 19 springs.
The Garden of Diana lies north of the palace. Catherine de Medici created it on an area developed by Francis I, and Henry IV and Louis XIV later redesigned it. Napoleon I and Louis-Philippe transformed it into an English garden. Its central Fountain of Diana was commissioned from the Francini brothers in 1603. Its sculptures and basin were removed, relocated, or reconstructed at different times, and the fountain was restored to an early seventeenth-century appearance in 1964.
English Garden and Belle-Eau spring
The English Garden occupies the site of the former Garden of the Pines and was recreated in 1812 by Maximilien Joseph Hurtault. It contains bosquets, an artificial river, mature plane trees, bald cypresses, spruces, tulip trees, and Japanese pagoda trees. Outdoor sculptures include copies of the Borghese Gladiator and the Dying Gladiator.
The Belle-Eau spring, also called the Bliaud or Blaut Fountain, lies in the English Garden. Its water passes through an octagonal stone basin and joins the Colonne spring to form a small artificial stream. The spring gave Fontainebleau its traditional mythical association with “beautiful water.”
Grotto of the Pines
The Grotto of the Pines is an artificial sixteenth-century ornamental grotto in the southwestern pavilion of the Cour du Cheval Blanc. Three rusticated arches are supported by monstrous atlantes, sculptural figures used as architectural supports. Inside, frescoes, relief animals, stones, shells, and artificial stalactites decorate the space. Its design is attributed uncertainly to Serlio or Primaticcio, and the work was probably completed around 1545. Restorations in 1984 to 1986 and in 2007 recovered the original vault composition and former floor level.
Carp Pond
The Carp Pond contains the octagonal Pond Pavilion, an ornamental shelter built under Henry IV, rebuilt under Louis XIV in 1662, and restored under Napoleon I. Seven of its eight sides have windows. The first recorded carp in the pond were approximately 60 fish presented to Henry IV by Charles of Lorraine.
Parterre and garden basins
The Parterre, also called the Grand Garden or King’s Garden, was created under Francis I, redesigned under Henry IV, and later laid out by André Le Nôtre. Its basins include the Tiber and Romulus basins. The central basin received a new bowl in 1817, while the Cascades Basin was built in 1661 and 1662 and has contained a bronze eagle defending its prey since 1866.
The courtyards and gardens retain defined spatial relationships within the complex. The Gallery of the Stags borders the gardens to the east, the jeu de paume lies to the west, the Trinity Chapel stands between the Oval Court and the Parterre, the Ballroom lies at the end of the chapel, and the Gallery of Diana connects the palace apartments with the northern garden area.
