Fontainebleau

The Château de Fontainebleau (French: Château de Fontainebleau) in Fontainebleau is a former royal residence located in Île-de-France, the original personal domain of the French king. The builder was Francis I of France. At the suggestion of his sister Margaret of Navarre, he surrounded himself with humanistic philosophers, writers, and artists. The castle became a leading example of Mannerism around the mid-16th century, the prevailing style in the visual arts.

Henry IV expanded the castle with a new wing and had a large portion of the garden created. The Sun King Louis XIV also spent autumns there to hunt. In 1685, he proclaimed the Edict of Fontainebleau there. James II of England spent several weeks there annually at the end of the 17th century.

Louis XV married there in 1725 and had Rousseau's opera Le devin du village (The Village Soothsayer) performed. In 1753, he commissioned the redesign of one of the halls; the decoration is one of the finest examples of French Rococo (with paintings by François Boucher). In 1785, the War of the Knives was ended in the palace. During the French Revolution, the castle was used as a military academy. Napoleon enlarged it with forty apartments and had Pope Pius VII stay there, who came to anoint him as emperor. Until Napoleon III, all French heads of state viewed the castle as one of their residences and their main hunting lodge.

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