Handpicked experience · Paris
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Fouquet threw one party at Vaux for Louis XIV and lost everything; the king took his architect, his painter and his gardener and pointed them at Versailles.
Two very different royal houses in a single day
A dramatised soundtrack rather than a plain recital
The view down the garden from high on the roof
Formal grounds walkable at both estates
Dressing-up provided for younger visitors
Road travel handled from the middle of Paris
A full day out of Paris to two châteaux with audio commentary at both: Fontainebleau, lived in by French rulers for eight centuries, and Vaux-le-Vicomte, which was finished sixty years before Versailles and is the reason Versailles looks the way it does.
Nicolas Fouquet was the king's superintendent of finances. He commissioned Vaux and hired the three best men available: Louis Le Vau to build it, Charles Le Brun to paint it, André Le Nôtre to lay out the garden. Villages were bought and cleared to make room.
On 17 August 1661 he opened it with a party for Louis XIV. Molière staged a new comedy written for the night, there was a banquet and fireworks over the canal, and the twenty-two-year-old king walked through a house grander than anything he owned.
Three weeks later Fouquet was arrested. The charges were financial, the trial lasted three years, and he spent the rest of his life in a fortress prison and died there.
Whatever the legal merits, the aesthetic outcome is not in dispute. Louis took Le Vau, Le Brun and Le Nôtre — the same three — and set them to work on a hunting lodge at Versailles. He also had trees and statuary carried away from Vaux's grounds.
So the sequence runs the other way round from how most people meet it. Vaux is not a small Versailles. Versailles is a very large Vaux, built by the same hands for a client who had seen what they could do and wanted more of it.
Fontainebleau was not one king's idea. It grew from a medieval hunting seat through eight centuries of monarchs adding wings, so the building reads as a sequence of tastes rather than a single design.
Napoleon kept it, furnished it and used it. It is where he signed his abdication in 1814 and where he said goodbye to his guard in the courtyard, which has been called the Court of Farewells ever since.
Lunch is not included and the day is long, so bring something or plan to buy on site.
The dome at Vaux is reached by stairs. Children's costumes are available there at no extra arrangement, which makes the second half of the day easier with young ones.
Open it to pick a date and work out the price.
What the fare covers, and what to budget for separately.
The practical detail, and the answers people actually ask for.
Nicolas Fouquet, the king's superintendent of finances, who cleared villages to make room for it.
Le Vau as architect, Le Brun as painter and Le Nôtre for the garden — the strongest team then working.
Molière premiered a piece written for that single evening, and the whole estate was lit for a king who owned nothing like it.
He was arrested within three weeks, tried for three years and died in a fortress prison.
He put the same three men onto a hunting lodge at Versailles, and had trees and statues removed from Vaux.
Vaux. Versailles is the larger sequel, not the original.
Older than the monarchy that made it famous — successive rulers extended a hunting seat rather than starting again.
Napoleon signed his abdication and took leave of his guard in the courtyard now called the Court of Farewells.