image :http://www.parisprovence.com.au/pages/topdestinations/pages/fontainebleau.jpgPalace of Fontainebleau, royal palace situated southeast of Paris, close to the valley of the Seine River, and a favorite resort of French monarchs from the 16th through the 19th centuries. Its ornate interiors are today a major tourist attraction.
The palace has its origins in a castle built by Louis VI in the 12th century. The pious Louis IX (Saint Louis) founded a monastery there in the 13th century, parts of which still survive. It was Francis I, however, who extended and enriched the buildings, making Fontainebleau a favored royal residence after 1528. It was in this period that a style of French painting and architecture, called the School of Fontainebleau, developed.
Francis I commissioned a number of important Italian and French artists to decorate his new palace. Their lavish decorations introduced the influence of the Italian style of painting known as Mannerism and of Italian Renaissance architecture (see Architecture: Italian Renaissance Architecture), which, at Fontainebleau were softened and refined into distinctly French versions of these styles.
Significant additions to the palace were made by subsequent kings, including Henry IV, another great collector, who doubled the size of the complex and improved the gardens. A great double staircase was added in the early 1600s under Louis XIII. Louis XIV, though preoccupied with the building of Versailles, employed French architect André Le Nôtre to remodel the gardens of Fontainebleau. Less admirably, he demolished part of the original 16th-century palace.
Fontainebleau was ransacked during the French Revolution (1789-1799) but was subsequently restored by the Emperor Napoleon I, who favored it above Versailles. (The former King's Bedroom was converted into a Throne Room for him.) Pope Pius VII was imprisoned by Napoleon in the palace for two years and it was at Fontainebleau the Emperor Napoleon gave up his throne in 1814. The palace was again revived as a royal residence in the mid-1800s by King Louis Philippe, who restored the 16th-century interiors and added his own distinctive touch to the building. Napoleon III and the Empress Eugènie, who reigned from 1852 to 1870, also visited Fontainebleau frequently. After the collapse of the empire in 1871, the palace became a state monument and is now among the most visited sites in France.
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