A town of northern France southeast of Paris. Its chateau (built by Francis I) was long a royal palace and is now the summer residence of the president of France. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes was signed here in 1685. Population: 15,900.
Fontainebleau
Dictionary:
Fon·taine·bleau (fŏn'tĭn-blō', fôN-tĕn-blō')  |
A town of northern France southeast of Paris. Its chateau (built by Francis I) was long a royal palace and is now the summer residence of the president of France. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes was signed here in 1685. Population: 15,900.
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| Architecture and Landscaping: Fontainebleau |
Style of architectural decoration at the French Royal
Bibliography
- Blunt (1982)
- Chilvers, Osborne, & Frampton (eds.) (1988)
- Shearman (1967)
The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)
| French Literature Companion: Fontainebleau |
Château in the Île-de-France where in 1528 the mason-architect Gilles Le Breton remodelled a fortified hunting-lodge into a palace for François Ier, housing his library (forerunner of the Bibliothèque Nationale) and art collections.
The building, now much altered, is one of the best examples of French Renaissance architecture, Italianate but reaching out towards a distinctive French classical style (among its early architects were Serlio and Delorme). Its decoration is equally important. Two artists dominate, the Florentine Giovanni Battista Rosso (‘Le Roux’) and Francesco Primaticcio from Bologna. The Galerie François Ier (1530s) was mainly decorated by Rosso in an Italian Mannerist style, with paintings and stucco (masks, swags, fruit, strap-work); the iconography show the king as Renaissance prince, Roman emperor, and classical god. Primaticcio decorated the Galerie Henri II (ballroom) and the Galerie d'Ulysse (1540s onwards); the latter was destroyed in the 18th c., but is known through engravings and tapestries and Primaticcio's Ulysses and Penelope, based on one of the panels.
The castle was the setting for royal ballets and other festivities (Ronsard's Bergerie, 1563-4), and became known as a centre for artists and a style of art. The ‘École de Fontainebleau’ included Niccolò dell'Abbate, who assisted Primaticcio from 1552, and other artists working elsewhere, such as the sculptor Jean Goujon. To them must be added the engravers, notably Luca Penni, Léonard Thiry, and Jean Mignon: it was through engraving that the art of Fontainebleau became internationally known. The style of Fontainebleau is essentially decorative, characterized by its tall human figures, with long necks and small heads, moving with sensual grace through leafy landscapes studded with classical ruins. Later in the century there was a second school of Fontainebleau, of which the principal artists were Ambroise Dubois, Toussaint Dubreuil, and Martin Frémiet. At Fontainebleau French writers were able to look at Italian Renaissance art naturalized in a French setting and enjoy a visual representation of classical mythology and ancient history, the purpose of which was partly aesthetic pleasure and partly royal and national propaganda. The poets of the Pléiade reflected this dual intention.
[Peter Sharratt]
Bibliography
- D. and E. Panofsky, ‘The Iconography of the Galerie François Ier at Fontainebleau’, in Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 2 (1958)
- L'École de Fontainebleau, exhibition catalogue, Grand Palais (1972)
- J.-J. Lévêque, L'École de Fontainebleau (1984)
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Fontainebleau |
Fontainebleau (fôNtĕnblō'), town (1990 pop. 18,037), Seine-et-Marne dept., N France, SE of Paris. It is a favorite spring and autumn resort and was long a royal residence, chiefly because of the excellent hunting in the vast Forest of Fontainebleau. Louis IV resided in Fontainebleau, and Philip IV and Louis XIII were born there. Francis I built the magnificent palace, the chief glory of French Renaissance architecture and the scene of many historic events. Francesco Primaticcio and Sebastiano Serlio, the principal artists of the palace, came to be known, along with their fellow artisans, as the first school of Fontainebleau. In the palace Louis XIV signed (1685) the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Pope Pius VII was imprisoned (1812-14), and Napoleon signed his first abdication (1814). Fontainebleau also has a military museum. The town was headquarters of the military branch of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) from 1945 to 1965.
| Wikipedia: Fontainebleau |
Coordinates: 48°24′35″N 2°42′09″E / 48.409722°N 2.7025°E
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Commune of Fontainebleau |
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| Château de Fontainebleau | |
| Location | |
  Fontainebleau
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| Time zone | CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2) |
| Administration | |
|---|---|
| Country | France |
| Region | Île-de-France |
| Department | Seine-et-Marne |
| Arrondissement | Fontainebleau |
| Canton | Fontainebleau |
| Intercommunality | Fontainebleau-Avon |
| Mayor | Frédéric Valletoux (2008–2014) |
| Statistics | |
| Elevation | 42–150 m (140–490 ft) (avg. 69 m/230 ft) |
| Land area1 | 172.05 km2 (66.43 sq mi) |
| Population2 | 16,236 (2006) |
| - Density | 94 /km2 (240 /sq mi) |
| Miscellaneous | |
| INSEE/Postal code | 77186/ 77300 |
| 1 French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km² (0.386 sq mi or 247 acres) and river estuaries. | |
| 2 Population sans doubles comptes: residents of multiple communes (e.g., students and military personnel) only counted once. | |
For other uses, see Fontainebleau (disambiguation).
Fontainebleau is a commune in the metropolitan area of Paris, France. It is located 55.5 kilometres (34.5 mi) south-southeast of the centre of Paris. Fontainebleau is a sub-prefecture of the Seine-et-Marne department, and it is the seat of the arrondissement of Fontainebleau. The commune has the largest land area in the Île-de-France region; it is the only one to cover a larger area than Paris itself.
Fontainebleau, together with the neighbouring commune of Avon and three other smaller communes, form an urban area of 36,713 inhabitants (according to the 1999 census). This urban area is a satellite of Paris.
Fontainebleau is renowned for the large and scenic forest of Fontainebleau, a favourite weekend getaway for Parisians, as well as for the historical château de Fontainebleau, which once belonged to the kings of France, It is also the home of INSEAD, one of the world's most elite business schools; of the École supérieure d'ingénieurs en informatique et génie des télécommunications (ESIGETEL), one of France's grandes écoles; and of a branch of the École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris, the Paris School of Mines, also one of the elite grandes écoles.
Inhabitants of Fontainebleau are called Bellifontains.
Contents |
History
Originally called Fontaine Belle eau or Fontaine Belleaue, Fontainebleau settled on its ultimate name in 1169.
This hamlet was endowed with a royal hunting lodge and a chapel by Louis VII in the middle of the twelfth century. A century later, Louis IX, also called Saint Louis, who held Fontainebleau in high esteem and referred to it as "his wilderness", had a country house and a hospital constructed there.
Philip the Fair was born there in 1268 and died there in 1314. In all, thirty-four sovereigns, from Louis VI, the Fat, (1081-1137) to Napoléon III (1808-1873), spent time at Fontainebleau.
The connection between the town of Fontainebleau and the French monarchy was reinforced with the transformation of the royal country house into a true royal palace, the Palace of Fontainebleau. This was accomplished by the great builder-king, Francis I (1494–1547), who, in the largest of his many construction projects, reconstructed, expanded, and transformed the royal château at Fontainebleau into a residence that became his favourite, as well as the residence of his mistress, Anne, duchess of Étampes.
From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, every monarch, from Francis I to Louis XV, made important renovations at the Palace of Fontainebleau, including demolitions, reconstructions, additions, and embellishments of various descriptions, all of which endowed it with a character that is a bit heterogeneous, but harmonious nonetheless.
On 18 October 1685, Louis XIV signed the Edict of Fontainebleau there. Also known as the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, this royal fiat reversed the permission granted to the Huguenots in 1598 to worship publicly in specified locations and hold certain other privileges. The result was that a large number of Protestants were forced into exile, mainly in the Low Countries, Prussia and in England.
The 1762 Treaty of Fontainebleau, a secret agreement between France and Spain concerning the Louisiana territory in North America, was concluded here. Also, preliminary negotiations, held before the 1763 Treaty of Paris was signed, ending the Seven Years' War, were at Fontainebleau.
During the French Revolution, Fontainebleau was temporarily renamed Fontaine-la-Montagne, meaning "Fountain by the Mountain". (The mountain referred to is the series of rocky formations located in the forest of Fontainebleau.)
On 29 October 1807, Manuel Godoy, chancellor to the Spanish king, Charles IV and Napoléon signed the Treaty of Fontainebleau, which authorized the passage of French troops through Spanish territories so that they might invade Portugal.
On 20 June 1812, Pope Pius VII arrived at the château of Fontainebleau, after a secret transfer from Savona, accompanied by his personal physician, Balthazard Claraz. In poor health, the pope was the prisoner of Napoléon, and he remained in his genteel prison at Fontainebleau for nineteen months. From June 1812 until 23 January 1814, the pope never left his apartments.
On 18 April 1814, Napoléon Bonaparte, shortly before his first abdication, bid farewell to the Old Guard, the renowned grognards (gripers) who had served with him since his very first campaigns, in the "White Horse Courtyard" (la cour du Cheval Blanc) at the Palace of Fontainebleau. (The courtyard has since been renamed the "Courtyard of Goodbyes".) According to contemporary sources, the occasion was very moving. The 1814 Treaty of Fontainebleau stripped Napoléon of his powers (but not his title as Emperor of the French) and sent him into exile on Elba.
In July and August 1946, the town hosted the Franco-Vietnamese Conference, intended to find a solution to the long-contested struggle for Vietnam’s independence from France, but the conference ended in failure.
Fontainebleau also hosted the general staff of the Allied Forces in Central Europe (Allied Forces Center or AFCENT) and the land forces command (LANDCENT); the air forces command (AIRCENT) was located nearby at Camp Guynemer. These facilities were in place from the inception of NATO until France’s partial withdrawal from NATO in 1967 when the United States returned those bases to French control. NATO moved AFCENT to Brunssum in the Netherlands and AIRCENT to Ramstein in West Germany. (Note that the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, also known as SHAPE, was located at Rocquencourt, west of Paris, quite a distance from Fontainebleau.
Tourism
Fontainebleau is a popular tourist destination; each year, 300,000 people visit the palace and about 11 million people visit the forest[citation needed].
Fontainebleau forest
The forest of Fontainebleau surrounds the city and dozens of nearby villages. It is protected by France's Office National des Forêts, and it is recognised as a French national park. It is managed in order that its wild plants and trees, such as the rare Service Tree of Fontainebleau, and its populations of birds, mammals, and butterflies, can be conserved. It is a former royal hunting park often visited by hikers and horse riders. The forest is also well regarded for bouldering and is particularly popular among climbers, as the biggest developed area of that kind in the world.
Royal Château de Fontainebleau
The Royal Château de Fontainebleau is a large palace where the kings of France took their ease. It is also the site where the French royal court, from 1528 onwards, entertained the body of new ideas that became known as the Renaissance.
INSEAD
The European (and historical) campus of the INSEAD business school is located at the edge of Fontainebleau. INSEAD students live in chateaux and other accommodations in the Fontainebleau area.
Other Notables
The graves of G. I. Gurdjieff and Katherine Mansfield can be found in the cemetery at Avon.
Transport
Fontainebleau is served by two stations on the Transilien Paris–Lyon rail line: Fontainebleau–Avon and Thomery. Fontainebleau–Avon station, the station closest to the center of Fontainebleau, is located near the dividing-line between the commune of Fontainebleau and the commune of Avon, on the Avon side of the border.
Famous Residents
- Philippe IV, king of France, born and died in Fontainebleau
- François II, king of France, born in Fontainebleau
- Henri III, king of France, born in Fontainebleau
- Louis XIII, king of France, born in Fontainebleau
- Christina, queen of Sweden; her lover, Monaldeschi, was murdered in Fontainebleau
- Alphonse XIII, king of Spain, after his abdication
- Aga Khan IV
- Anna Elizabeth Klumpke, an early twentieth-century artist
- The prince and princess of Hanover
- Rosa Bonheur, a nineteenth-century artist
Also, Tom Ripley, the fictional protagonist of several novels by Patricia Highsmith, lives in a small village a few miles away, and he sometimes visits the town.
Image Gallery
 Hunting Fountain |
 Bell Tower |
 The Trinity Chapel at Fontainebleau |
See also
- Communauté de communes de Fontainebleau-Avon
- List of climbing areas
- Milly-la-Forêt
- Treaty of Fontainebleau (1762)
- Fontainebleau High School
References
External links
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 | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Architecture and Landscaping. A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. Copyright © 1999, 2006 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| French Literature Companion. The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French. Copyright © 1995, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Read more |
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