Wednesday Walk: The palace gardens of Fontainebleau

Hello dear Steemians and photography enthusiast,

Today I want to share with you my wednesday walk that I did through the palace gardens of Fontainebleau. It's located a about 50km south of Paris and the first record of a castle at Fontainebleau dates back to 1137. Since then a lot of different french kings have used the castle and made a lot of constructural changes and additions. For example, Napoleon Bonarparte used the place for his meeting with the pope to get crowned.

^{The castle of Fontainebleau.}

We are here mainly for bouldering in the forest, about which I will make a post as well pretty soon. But on this day we went into the town of Fontainebleau to do some shopping and send some letters to germany. After that I wanted to go into the castle garden to take some photos. I have been there several times and I knew this would make a perfect wednesday walk to share with you.

^{The frontyard is majestic already.}

We entered the estate through a big gate with golden ornaments from a big town square. Through the gate we had a perfect view onto the frontyard of the castle with its horseshoe staircase. A big group of tourist was standing close to it listening to a guide explaining. To take the shot, I almost had to step inside of the group...

^{The staricase was initally build for Henry II in 1547–59 and was rebuild for Louis XIII 85 years later.}

After that we walked through an archway to reach a side court of the castle. From there we could see the first part of the castle gardens. On the right side there was a big green lake with people riding rowboats on it. In the middle of the lake a small lodge was build on an island and big purple carps were simming in the water. The court was equipped with different statues made from stone and metal.

^{The lodge in the middle of the lake and a rowboat in front.}

^{Some supposably well known guy in a noble stance.}

^{Awesome sculptor work. This must have taken forever.}

^{And another one...}

Through a second archway we reached the vast back part of the gardens. The lawn and flower beds are arranged symmetrically around a huge water basin with a fountain in the center. My grilfriend was already tired from walking around the city all day, so she sat down on a bench and I headed off alone. Along the side of the castle there was an avenue where occasionally horse-drawn carriages drove by.

^{Probably antoher guided tour riding around in a carriage.}

^{A very long strip with hundreds of flowers.}

I went down to a long strip of flowers and followed it to the end of the garden. On my way I took a few photos of the awesome flowers growing there.

^{A beautiful purple blossom with lots of petals.}

^{And a orange blossom with perfect shape.}

At this end of the garden there was another basin with a statue of a bird looking into the distance. After a crossing street there was a second basin which was really long and had broad strips of lawn on the sides.

^{The arrangement of the basin, the trees and the lawn made for an awesome perspective.}

After that I walked to the opposite side from where we entered the gardens. From here I had a perfect view over the gardens with the big castle in the background.

^{A nice angle of the garden and the castle.}

^{And another one in black and white, which i find quite interesting as well.}

I walked back through the middle of the garden because I wanted to have a closer look at the fountain in the middle of the whole arrangement. Some swans attracted the eyes of some visitors more than the fountian or the castle. Me included as I took some photos of them as they dived for some food on the ground of the basin.

^{Curious swans swimming close to some people taking photos.}

^{A swan, diving for food...}

After this little distraction I focused again on the fountain and took some photos from different angles. I decided to make one of these images the introductory photography at the beginning of this post. The following one is shot with a slightly wider angle to get a better overview of the garden.

After that half hour walk through the gardens, I retuned to my girlfriend and we decided to head off back into the forest. It was a nice and enjoyable day, but we now wanted to get back into the less crowded forest again.

Hope you enjoyed my entry for the wednesday walk,
if you did please let me know in the comments :)

Have a good week and see you next wednesday!
Constantin

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Equipment used: | Canon EOS 50D | Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5 EX DC HSM | Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 STM |