made it to Paris, so now parked up in bassin de l'arsenal. see below. to do the sights and sounds of Paris for a week and then move on.

Bassin de l’Arsenal

Color photograph of a large man-made lake with boats

text description

This is bassin de l’Arsenal, or, more formally, the Port de Plaisance de Paris Arsenal, a man-made lake between the Seine River and the Canal Saint Martin. It is a very pleasant port for pleasure boating that is virtually unknown to tourists, just south of the place de la Bastille.

You‘re looking north in this photograph, which was taken from a pedestrian bridge that crosses the lake roughly at its midpoint. Off in the distance is the northern shore of the lake. You can see the square, dark opening of a tunnel leading north from the lake; that‘s the Canal Saint Martin, which runs underground for a kilometre or so before returning to the open air and continuing on to another lake south of La Villette. Just above the opening into the tunnel is a row of windows forming part of the Bastille station of Métro line 1; from within the station, you can look out over the lake to the south. Above that is the vehicular roundabout of the place de la Bastille, and you can see the centerpiece of that roundabout, the greenish July Column, at its center. On the right and next to the roundabout is the Opéra Bastille, the newest and largest opera house in Paris.

In the seventeenth century, this lake was just a ditch through which a small stream drained into the Seine, and the city limit of Paris ran along the left side of the ditch (from the viewpoint seen in this photo). The fortress of the Bastille itself was about even with the northern end of this lake, on the right, behind those trees; nothing remains of it above ground at the original site, but you can see chunks of it elsewhere here in my gallery.

Behind the camera in this photo is the remainder of the lake and the set of locks that moves boats between the lake and the Seine just beyond. Most of the boats in the lake are quite nice, as you can see. The park that runs along the east side of the lake (to the right in this photo) is quite pleasant (note all the people relaxing there on this warm summer day).

Click directly on the photo to see a larger version (twice this size). Photographed on July 21, 2000.

last two weeks have been drifting slowly towards Paris. From St florentin, to the Chateau de Fontainebleau (see below)

Barry and Margaret are now cruising down the Seine and have just pulled in at the port de fontainebleau just a leisurely 3km bike ride from the boat. Shame its closed today, but they will have a look around the gardens and grounds anyway.

Just 2 days boating away from Paris now, so have that to look forward to.

See below for info on Chateau, looks pretty impressive from the pictures...
to see more info on the chateau click here

Château de Fontainebleau

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

Palace and Park of Fontainebleau*
UNESCO World Heritage Site

State Party	France
Type	Cultural
Criteria	ii, vi
Reference	160
Region†	Europe and North America
Inscription History
Inscription	1981 (5th Session)
* Name as inscribed on World Heritage List. † Region as classified by UNESCO.

The Royal Château of Fontainebleau (in the Seine-et-Marne département) is one of the largest French royal châteaux. The château as it is today is the work of many French monarchs, building on a structure of Francis I. The building is ranged round a series of courts. The city of Fontainebleau has grown up around the remainder of the Forest of Fontainebleau, a former royal hunting park.

Left Part of the Cour d'Honneur

The chateau introduced to France the Italian Mannerist style in interior decoration and in gardens, and transformed them in the translation. The French Mannerist style of interior decoration of the 16th century is known as the "Fontainebleau style": it combined sculpture, metalwork, painting, stucco and woodwork, and outdoors introduced the patterned garden parterre. The Fontainebleau style combined allegorical paintings in moulded plasterwork where the framing was treated as if it were leather or paper, slashed and rolled into scrolls and combined with arabesques and grotesques. Fontainbleau ideals of female beauty are Mannerist: a small neat head on a long neck, exaggeratedly long torso and limbs, small high breasts—almost a return to Late Gothic beauties. The new works at Fontainebleau were recorded in refined and detailed engravings that circulated among connoisseurs and artists. Through the engravings by the "School of Fontainebleau" this new style was transmitted to other northern European centres, Antwerp especially, and Germany, and eventually London.

[edit] History

Interior

Boudoir of Queen Marie Antoinette

The older château on this site was already used in the latter part of the 12th century by King Louis VII, for whom Thomas Becket consecrated the chapel. Fontainebleau was a favourite residence of Philip Augustus and Louis IX. The creator of the present edifice was Francis I, under whom the architect Gilles le Breton erected most of the buildings of the Cour Ovale, including the Porte Dorée, its southern entrance. The king also invited the architect Sebastiano Serlio to France, and Leonardo da Vinci. The Gallery of Francis I, with its frescoes framed in stucco by Rosso Fiorentino, carried out between 1522 and 1540, was the first great decorated gallery built in France. Broadly speaking, at Fontainebleau the Renaissance was introduced to France. The Salle des Fêtes, in the reign of Henri II, was decorated by the Italian Mannerist painters, Francesco Primaticcio and Niccolò dell'Abbate. Benvenuto Cellini's "Nymph of Fontainebleau", commissioned for the château, is at the Louvre.

Fontainebleau from the lake

Gardens

Another campaign of extensive construction was undertaken by King Henri II and Catherine de Medici, who commissioned architects Philibert Delorme and Jean Bullant. To the Fontainebleau of François I and Henri II, King Henri IV added the court that carries his name, the Cour des Princes, with the adjoining Galerie de Diane de Poitiers and the Galerie des Cerfs, used as a library. A "second school of Fontainebleau" decorators, less ambitious and original than the first, evolved from these additional projects. Henri IV pierced the wooded park with a 1200m canal (which can be fished today) and ordered the planting of pines, elms and fruit trees. His gardener Claude Mollet, trained at Château d'Anet, laid out patterned parterres. Three hundred years later the château had fallen into disrepair; during the French Revolution many of the original furnishings were sold, in the long Revolutionary sales of the contents of all the royal châteaux, intended as a way of raising money for the nation and ensuring that the Bourbons could not return to their comforts. Nevertheless, within a decade Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, began to transform the Château de Fontainebleau into a symbol of his grandeur, as an alternative to empty Versailles, with its Bourbon connotations. At Fontainebleau Napoleon bade farewell to his Old Guard and went into exile in 1814. With modifications of the château's structure, including the cobblestone entrance wide enough for his carriage, Napoleon helped make the château the place that visitors see today. Fontainebleau was the setting of the Second Empire court of his nephew Napoleon III.

Philip the Fair, Henry III and Louis XIII were all born in the palace, and the first of these kings died there. Christina of Sweden lived there for years, following her abdication in 1654. In 1685 Fontainebleau saw the signing of the Edict of Fontainebleau, which revoked the Edict of Nantes (1598). Royal guests of the Bourbon kings were housed at Fontainebleau: Peter the Great of Russia and Christian VII of Denmark, and so, under Napoleon was Pope Pius VII — in 1804 when he came to consecrate the emperor Napoleon, and in 1812–1814, when he was Napoleon's prisoner.

Today part of the château is home to the Écoles d'Art Américaines, a school of art, architecture, and music for students from the United States. Preserved on the grounds is Henry IV's jeu de paume (real tennis court). It is the largest such court in the world, and one of the few publicly owned.^[1]

Jazz pianist and composer Tadd Dameron wrote the composition "Fontainebleau" upon visiting the palace.