Castles · Tour

Vaux-le-Vicomte 3D Audio Guide and Fontainebleau in Costume, from Paris

The day leaves central Paris in the morning for the château that made Louis XIV want Versailles. Vaux-le-Vicomte comes first, and the audio guide here is not the usual numbered commentary. It is recorded in 3D sound, so the nobles are asleep in their rooms and the kitchens are working around you as you walk through them. The route covers Nicolas Fouquet's staterooms and then goes down into the vast kitchens and cellars, where the noise makes more sense than it does upstairs. Outside there are acres of clipped hedge, water and flowerbeds. Lunch is your own arrangement: a picnic on the grass, or the château restaurant. The afternoon is Fontainebleau, the only royal and imperial château lived in for seven centuries without a break. The styles change as you cross it, medieval to Renaissance to classical, because every reign rebuilt part of what it inherited. Napoleon I's throne is there, and so is the horseshoe staircase in the courtyard, which is the shot everyone takes. Costume hire is an option here, and it is the sort of thing that is either the whole point of the day or firmly not.