Palace of Fontainebleau

About

A low granite building nestled among the woods near Paris was once the summer retreat of the royal family. Mannerist carvings wrapped around the old stone walls hold bygone time as if carved into them. There, as I climbed the stairs where Louis XI once loved to lie down, I felt a sensation as though the swirl of the carvings brushed past my fingertips. Sculptures in the Fontainebleau style and grotesque paintings still cover the walls, and a quiet movement, of the kind found only in Persian ceramics, cuts through the air. The fresco where my gaze lingered seems to flow with the eyes of an era when the king spent his days together with Leonardo da Vinci.