Château de Fontainebleau

This afternoon was the conference trip, to Fontainebleau palace.  This is right in Fontainebleau itself, so no long coach trip required.  In fact, I have been walking past it every day on my way to the conference venue.  I thought it was big from what I'd seen.  But it's bigger on the inside.

Plan of the castle.  The view from the road is of the courtyard marked (1).  It's huge.  But there is a second equally huge part behind it!

The view of the chateau from position (1) on the plan above.  It looks big.  It's bigger.

The guided tour goes through a relatively small part of this, but is still quite long, and carefully designed to start with amazing and move on to jaw-dropping.

We start in a long corridor of paintings of Napoleon and family.

The rooms off the corridor are full of modest little ornaments...

Moving through this into the older part reveals even more ornateness.

Just a door

Another door like the one above (see the carved heads in side view) leads into a gallery

Every inch of the gallery walls and ceiling is covered with carvings, statues, and painintgs

and I thought the gallery ceiling was ornate...

I suppose this sort of thing happens when you run out of walls to decorate...

This is the wall at the far end of that ceiling.  I suppose it does make the ceiling look relatively restrained.

my fascination with ceilings continues

If you prefer looking down, there's always an understated carpet to catch the eye

Ooh! A library! (We weren't allowed in, although most of us on the tour wanted in!)

Now getting to the more homely part : a bedroom ...

... and a games room

okay, back to ceilings

and the floor under that ceiling

That was the end of the interior tour.  We had a brief walk outside, including:

if I understood correctly, this is the kitchen

We then took a brief tour round some of the gardens.  But it was way too hot to linger.

Magnifique!  Absolutely stunning.  Highly recommended.

But now I want to go start a revolution ... well, I'll wait until after the conference dinner, maybe...