Palace Fontainebleau

Royal Château
The Royal Château of Fontainebleau is the largest of the French royal châteaux in the Seine-et-Marne département. The château or castle 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.

Italian Mannerist style
Fontainebleau 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.

Architectural elements
The palace at Fontainebleau was has architectural elements from the 16th to the 19th century. In the 16th century, Henry II and Catherine de Medici commissioned architects Philibert Delorme and Jean Bullant to build a new palace on the site. Italian Mannerist artists Rosso Fiorentino and Primaticcio came to assist in the interior decoration, helping to found the School of Fontainebleau.

French kings
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, when he was Napoleon's prisoner. The palace was Napoleon's favorite residence.

Great hunting opportunities
Loved by French kings for its closeness to great hunting opportunities, the Château de Fontainbleau makes a delightful side trip from Paris. Located about 40 miles south of the city and accessible by train in only 45 minutes, we recommend you to go in the morning and walk around the grounds of the palace.

Railway Museum The Netherlands

The 19th-century station on Maliebaan has been fully restored to its former glory. Here you feel like the first passenger in a recently completed station in 1874. A lavishly painted booking hall with chandeliers, a 1st and 2nd class waiting room, a luxury dining room and even toilets with a 19th-century feel show you how the station was once the gateway to the world. It will not therefore come as any surprise that this is also where you buy your admission ticket to the Railway Museum behind 19th-century ticket windows.

The Royal Waiting Room from 1892 from the State Railway station in The Hague makes the station an example of stations of those days.
Nederlands Spoorwegmuseum. Dutch Railway Museum. Maliebaanstation, Utrecht, The Netherlands.

Stonehenge

Ancient stone circle

The great and ancient stone circle of Stonehenge is one of the wonders of the world. What visitors see today, are the substantial remnants of the last in a sequence of such monuments erected between circa 3000BC and 1600BC.
The stones were built by three different cultures, Windmill, First Wessex and the Beakers - so named because when they buried their dead they had their pots interred with them.
The Bluestones are the smaller inner stones, which originate from Preselli Mountains in Wales, and when they become wet they turn blue.
There is no explanation as to why the site was chosen. Various theories have been put forward but no conclusive evidence has been found to support them.