9 Best Sights in Side Trips from Paris, France

The 18th-century Château de Compiègne, where the future Louis XVI first met Marie-Antoinette in 1770, was restored by Napoléon I and favored for wild weekends by his nephew Napoléon III. The first Napoléon's legacy is more keenly felt: his state apartments have been refurbished using the original designs for hangings and upholstery, and bright silks and damasks adorn every room. Much of the mahogany furniture gleams with ormolu, and the chairs sparkle with gold leaf. Napoléon III's furniture looks ponderous by comparison. Behind the palace is a gently rising 4-km (2½-mile) vista, inspired by the park at Schönbrunn, in Vienna, where Napoléon I's second wife, Empress Marie-Louise, grew up. Also here is the Musée du Second Empire, a collection of decorative arts from the Napoléon III era: its showstopper is Franz-Xaver Winterhalter's Empress Eugénie Surrounded by Her Ladies in Waiting, a famed homage to the over-the-top hedonism of the Napoléon Trois era. Make time for the Musée de la Voiture (Vehicle Museum) and its display of carriages, coaches, and old cars—including the Jamais Contente (Never Satisfied), the first car to reach 100 kph (62 mph).

Framed by majestic avenues of centuries-old plane trees, Château de Courances's style is Louis Treize, although its finishing touch—a horseshoe staircase (mirroring the one at nearby Fontainebleau)—was an opulent 19th-century statement made by Baron Samuel de Haber, a banker who bought the estate and whose daughter then married into the regal family of the de Behagués. Their descendants, the Marquises de Ganay, have made the house uniquely and famously chez soi, letting charming personal taste trump conventional bon goût, thanks to a delightful mixture of 19th-century knickknacks and grand antiques. Outside, the vast French Renaissance water gardens create stunning vistas of stonework, grand canals, and rushing cascades. The house can be seen only on a 40-minute tour.

The glorious Château de Fontainebleau was a pinnacle of elegance and grandeur more than 100 years before the rise of Versailles. The château began life in the 12th century as a royal residence and hunting lodge and still retains vestiges of its medieval past, though much of it dates to the 16th century. Additions made by various royal incumbents—including 30 kings of France—through the next 300 years add up to the fascinating and opulent edifice we see today. Fontainebleau was begun under the flamboyant Renaissance king François I, the French contemporary of England's Henry VIII, who hired Italian artists Il Rosso (a pupil of Michelangelo) and Primaticcio to embellish his château. In fact, they did much more: by introducing the pagan allegories and elegant lines of Mannerism to France, they revolutionized French decorative art. Their virtuoso frescoes and stuccowork can be admired in the Galerie François-Ier (Francis I Gallery) and in the jewel of the interior, the 100-foot-long Salle de Bal (Ballroom), with its luxuriant wood paneling and its gleaming parquet floor that reflects the patterns on the ceiling. Like the château as a whole, the room exudes a sense of elegance and style, but on a more intimate, human scale than at Versailles—this is Renaissance, not Baroque. Napoléon's apartments occupied the first floor. You can see a lock of his hair, his Légion d'Honneur medal, his imperial uniform, the hat he wore on his return from Elba in 1815, and one bed in which he definitely did spend a night (almost every town in France boasts a bed in which the emperor supposedly snoozed). Joséphine's Salon Jaune (Yellow Room) is one of the best examples of the Empire style—the austere neoclassical style promoted by the emperor. There's also a throne room—Napoléon spurned the one at Versailles, a palace he disliked, establishing his imperial seat in the former King's Bedchamber here—and the Queen's Boudoir, also known as the Room of the Six Maries (occupants included ill-fated Marie-Antoinette and Napoléon's second wife, Marie-Louise).

Although Louis XIV's architectural fancy was concentrated on Versailles, he commissioned Mansart to design new pavilions and had André Le Nôtre replant the gardens at Fontainebleau, where he and his court returned faithfully in fall for the hunting season. But it was Napoléon who spent lavishly to make a Versailles, as it were, out of Fontainebleau.

Created during the reign of Napoléon III for the Empress Eugénie, the exquisite Théâtre Impérial was "rediscovered" in the early 2000s after being closed up in 1941. Though the theater's sumptuous golden upholstery, lighting, carpets, and gilded boiserie remained surprisingly intact, a restoration was completed in 2020. Visitors can see this jewel on one of the château's marvelous tours.

Built in 1622, La Malmaison was bought by the future empress Joséphine in 1799 as a love nest for Napoléon and herself, three years after their marriage. Theirs is one of Europe's most dramatic love stories, replete with affairs, scandal, and hatred—the emperor's family often disparaged Joséphine, a name bestowed on her by Napoléon (her real name was Rose), as "the Creole." After the childless Joséphine was divorced by the heir-hungry emperor in 1809, she retired to La Malmaison and died here on May 29, 1814. The château has 24 rooms furnished with exquisite tables, chairs, and sofas of the Napoleonic period; of special note are the library, game room, and dining room. The walls are adorned with works by artists of the day, such as Jacques-Louis David, Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, and Baron Gérard. Take time to admire the clothes and hats that belonged to Napoléon and Joséphine, particularly the empress's gowns. Their carriage can be seen in one of the garden pavilions; another contains a unique collection of snuffboxes donated by Prince George of Greece. The gardens are delightful, reflecting Joséphine's love of roses and exotic plants (her collection was one of the most important in France), and especially beautiful when the regimented rows of tulips are blooming in spring.

The high-roof Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, partially surrounded by a moat, is set well back from the road behind iron railings topped with sculpted heads. A cobbled avenue stretches up to the entrance, and stone steps lead to the vestibule, which seems small given the noble scale of the exterior. Charles Le Brun's captivating decoration includes the ceiling of the Chambre du Roi (Royal Bedchamber), depicting Time Bearing Truth Heavenward, framed by stuccowork by sculptors François Girardon and André Legendre. Along the frieze you can make out small squirrels, the Fouquet family's emblem—squirrels are known as fouquets in local dialect. But Le Brun's masterpiece is the ceiling in the Salon des Muses (Hall of Muses), a brilliant allegorical composition painted in glowing, sensuous colors that some feel even surpasses his work at Versailles. On the ground floor the impressive Grand Salon (Great Hall), with its unusual oval form and 16 caryatid pillars symbolizing the months and seasons, has harmony and style even though the ceiling decoration was never finished.

The state salons are redolent of le style Louis Quatorze, thanks to the grand state beds, Mazarin desks, and Baroque marble busts—gathered together by the current owners of the château, the Comte et Comtesse de Vogüé—that replace the original pieces, which Louis XIV trundled off as booty to Versailles. In the basement, where cool, dim rooms were once used to store food and wine and house the château's kitchens, you can find rotating exhibits about the château's past and life-size wax figures illustrating its history, including the notorious 19th-century murder-suicide of two erstwhile owners, the Duc and Duchess de Choiseul-Praslin.

Le Nôtre's carefully restored gardens, considered by many to be the designer's masterwork, are at their best when the fountains—which function via gravity, exactly as they did in the 17th century—are turned on (the second and last Saturdays of each month from April through October, 4–6 pm). The popular illuminated evenings, when the château is dazzlingly lighted by 2,000 candles, are held every Saturday from early May to early October. Open for dinner during this event only, the formal Les Charmilles restaurant serves a refined candlelight dinner outdoors, complete with crystal and white linens, on the lovely Parterre de Diane facing the château (reservations essential). There's also a delightful Champagne bar with lounge chairs and music on these special evenings. At other times, L'Ecureuil (a more casual eatery) is a good choice for lunch or snacks, and you are always welcome to bring along a picnic to enjoy in the extensive gardens.

A two-century spree of indulgence by the consecutive reigns of three French kings produced two of the world's most historic landmarks: gloriously, the Palace of Versailles and, momentously, the French Revolution. Less a monument than a world unto itself, Versailles is the king of palaces. The end result of countless francs, 40 years, and 36,000 laborers, it was Louis XIV's monument to himself—the Sun King. Construction of the sprawling palace and gardens, which Louis personally and meticulously oversaw, started in 1661 and took 40 years to complete. Today the château seems monstrously big, but it wasn't large enough for the army of 20,000 noblemen, servants, and hangers-on who moved in with Louis. A new city—a new capital, in fact—had to be constructed from scratch to accommodate them.

One of the palace highlights is the dazzling Galerie des Glaces (Hall of Mirrors). Lavish balls were once held here, as was a later event with much greater world impact: the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, which put an end to World War I on June 28, 1919. The Grands Appartements (State Apartments) are whipped into a lather of decoration, with painted ceilings, marble walls, parquet floors, and canopy beds topped with ostrich plumes. The Petits Appartements (Private Apartments), where the royal family and friends lived, are on a more human scale, lined with 18th-century gold and white rococo boiseries. The Opéra Royal, the first oval hall in France, was designed for Louis XV and inaugurated in 1770 for the marriage of 15-year-old Louis XVI to 14-year-old Austrian archduchess Marie-Antoinette. Considered the finest 18th-century opera house in Europe at the time (with acoustics to match), it is now a major venue for world-class performers. Completed in 1701 in the Louis XIV style, the Appartements du Roi (King's Apartments) comprise a suite of 15 rooms set in a "U" around the east facade's Marble Court. The Chambre de la Reine (Queen's Bed Chamber)—once among the world's most opulent—was updated for Marie-Antoinette in the chicest style of the late 18th century. The superb Salon du Grand Couvert, antechamber to the Queen's Apartments, is the place where Louis XIV took his supper every evening at 10 o'clock. The sumptuously painted walls and ceilings, tapestries, woodwork, and even the furniture have been returned to their original splendor, making this the only one of the queen's private rooms that can be seen exactly as it was first decorated in the 1670s. The park and gardens are a great place to stretch your legs while taking in details of André Le Nôtre's formal landscaping.

Versailles's royal getaways are as impressive in their own right as the main palace. A charmer with the ladies (as Louis's many royal mistresses would attest), the Sun King enjoyed a more relaxed atmosphere in which to conduct his dalliances away from the prying eyes of the court at the Grand Trianon. But Versailles's most famous getaway, the Hameau de la Reine, was added under the reign of Louis XVI at the request of his relentlessly scrutinized wife, Marie-Antoinette. Seeking to create a simpler "country" life away from the court's endless intrigues, between 1783 and 1787, the queen had her own rustic hamlet built in the image of a charming Normandy village, complete with a mill and dairy, roving livestock, and delightfully natural gardens. One of the most visited monuments in the world, Versailles is almost always teeming, especially in the summer; try to beat the crowds by arriving at 9 am, and buying your ticket online.

Surrounded by a magnificent 36,000-acre forest, this elegant château is a popular spot for biking and walking. Most of the structure dates to the early 18th century, but the brawny Tour François Ier (Francis I Tower), named for the king who died here in 1547, was part of a fortified castle that earlier stood on this site. Highlights include the wood-paneled apartments, especially the Boudoir de la Comtesse (Countess's Dressing Room); the marble-sheathed Salle de Marbre (Marble Hall), dating to the Renaissance; and the Salle de Bains de Napoléon (Napoléon's Bathroom), adorned with Pompeii-style frescoes. Compared with the muscular forecourt, the château's lakeside facade is a scene of unexpected serenity and, as flowers spill from its balconies, cheerful informality. Guided visits in English are available on the hour (10–5) by reservation.

Next to the St-Germain RER train station, this stone-and-brick château, with its dry moat, intimidating circular towers, and La Grande Terrasse, is one of the most spectacular of all French garden set pieces. The château itself, gleaming after a five-year renovation, dates to the 16th and 17th centuries, but a royal palace has stood here since the early 12th century, when Louis VI—known as Le Gros (the Plump)—exploited St-Germain's defensive potential in his bid to pacify the Île-de-France. A hundred years later, Louis IX (St. Louis) added the elegant Sainte-Chapelle, the château's oldest remaining section. Note the square-top, not pointed, side windows and the filled-in rose window on the back wall. Charles V (1364–80) built a powerful defensive keep in the mid-14th century, but from the 1540s François I and his successors transformed St-Germain into a palace with an appearance more domestic than warlike. Louis XIV was born here, and it was here that his father, Louis XIII, died. Until 1682, when the court moved to Versailles, it remained the country's foremost royal residence outside Paris, and several Molière plays were premiered in the main hall. Since 1867 the château has housed the impressive Musée des Antiquités Nationales (Museum of National Antiquities), holding a trove of artifacts, figurines, brooches, and weapons, from the Stone Age to the 8th century. Behind the château is André Le Nôtre's Grande Terrasse, a terraced promenade lined by lime trees. Directly overlooking the Seine, it was completed in 1673 and has rarely been outdone for grandeur or length.