Taxi Paris → Fontainebleau

Fontainebleau is a town of 15,000 in Seine-et-Marne whose history is inseparable from its royal château, residence of French sovereigns from François I to Napoleon III. The Château de Fontainebleau, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is the only royal castle continuously inhabited for eight centuries — unlike Versailles, it bears traces of every era from medieval to Second Empire. Its 1,500 rooms, the François I Gallery decorated by Rosso and Primatice (birthplace of the French Renaissance), the Napoleon III theatre and 130-hectare gardens make it unmissable. The Fontainebleau Forest spans 25,000 hectares, a UNESCO biosphere reserve attracting 17 million annual visitors: hikers on trails marked since 1842, climbers on world-famous sandstone boulders (over 30,000 routes), riders, cyclists and naturalists. Barbizon village, at the forest's edge, is the birthplace of pre-Impressionist painting — Millet, Rousseau and Corot lived and worked there. INSEAD, the prestigious international business school based here since 1967, generates regular professional traffic to Paris.