The Gallery of Francis I
Carved stucco and paintings that brought the Renaissance to France.
user:Carolus — CC BY 2.5 · Eusebius — CC BY 3.0 · Louis Petitot — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Pierre Biart sculptor engraver. — CC BY-SA 4.0
**Versailles** if this is your first time in Paris and you want the most famous, the largest and the most spectacular — the Hall of Mirrors and the vast gardens. But prepare for **queues and suffocating crowds** even with a booking. **Fontainebleau** is the smarter choice for a repeat visitor or anyone who hates crowds: a palace of no lesser historical importance (World Heritage, eight centuries, forty rulers), **far quieter and usually cheaper**, where you walk the rooms at your own pace. With two days: Versailles one day, Fontainebleau the other — the experience won't repeat itself.
**By train**: from **Gare de Lyon** to **Fontainebleau-Avon** (about 40 minutes on the suburban line), then a **bus** from outside the station straight to the palace (about 15 minutes, roughly every quarter hour). That is an hour to an hour and a half each way, with relatively cheap tickets. By car it is about an hour from Paris, with parking near the palace. ⚠ Plan a full day or a long half-day: the palace is large and the gardens deserve time, and there is no sense travelling ninety minutes for a two-hour visit.
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The palace the French call **"the house of centuries"**, a UNESCO World Heritage site about 55 kilometres south-east of Paris. Two things set it apart from Versailles. First, Versailles was built by one king in one era, whereas Fontainebleau was lived in by **forty kings and emperors** across **eight centuries** — from the twelfth century to Napoleon III — each adding a wing or changing a decor, so the building itself is a record of shifting French taste, layer on layer. Second, it is **far quieter**: it receives a small fraction of Versailles's visitors, so you walk its rooms without queues and without a crowd pushing you along. Its most famous room is the long **Gallery of Francis I** with its carved stucco and wall paintings — the room that launched the "School of Fontainebleau" and brought the Italian Renaissance into France. With it come Napoleon's apartments in their original furniture and the **horseshoe staircase** in the courtyard, where he said farewell to his army in 1814 before his exile. Around it are wide gardens, a lake, and the **forest of Fontainebleau**, known for its boulders and its trails.
Carved stucco and paintings that brought the Renaissance to France.
Rooms in their original furniture as he left them.
Where he bade farewell to his army in 1814.
77300 Fontainebleau, Seine-et-Marne