I’d visited Château de Fontainebleau in 1966. I have no recollection of the reason I chose it or how I got there. The only other place I visited during my 6 months in Paris was Versailles, when a friend came to town. I was working 6 days a week and resting, as the story goes, on the 7th.
I remember just two things from my 50-years-ago day at Fontainebleau. I remember Napoleon’s bed and, confirming one of the few things I thought I knew about the man, it was remarkably short. And the other was the staircase, pictured above. I was so glad to see it on this spring day in 2016, confirming that something fixed in memory wasn’t imagined. I’m sorry to report I cannot confirm the memory of the bed. We walked through the grounds of the château but didn’t go in, our focus for the morning the big Friday market.
Marché Saint-Louis, occupies a large paved area in the center of Fontainebleau. Since I had absolutely no memory of the town, I was happy to find it exceedingly pleasant and a place I could easily imagine staying a while. And who knows, I may do just that. I can imagine a cozy studio apartment with a tiny kitchen, walking distance to this wonderful market, with its beautiful food sold by friendly vendors. I now have a great deal more to recall about Fontainebleau than a bed and a staircase. And I must return to make sure about the bed.
Meat, Fish, Poultry
Plants, as in “Eat Plants”
Cheese…
…and Butter
The End
Fontainebleau’s Market, Marché Saint-Louis
Tuesday, Friday, Sunday: 8:00 – 12:00 noon
Next week, a meditation in pictures on an Englishwoman’s home in France.
Find all 7 chapters of PortMoresby’s anniversary visit to Paris, here.
And more contributions here.
Oh, my. Oh, my. The radishes. The sausages, the pies…nothing I eat today will be nearly as satisfying as the dream you’ve started on my tongue. Thanks! Really.
But you will have to check that bed, because it appears from recent scholarship that Napoleon wasn’t all that short. Although he wasn’t as tall as many of the officers he served with, he was actually about 5’7″ in our measure.
The 5’2″ measurement first appears in a measurement made by physicians at his death in 1821…and the confusion is in part his own fault. According to Wikipedia Napoleon had no patience with the Revolution’s metric system and the haphazard way in which it was observed in France.
But he knew standard measures were needed, so in 1812 he decreed a compromise: People could continue to measure in pieds, but the foot would now be 1/3 of a metre. There would still be 12 pouces in a pied. This system of ‘customary measures,” or mesures usuelles was in use 1812 to 1839.
Taking this ‘French measure’ of 5’2″ and converting it to English measure corrects his actual height at death to just over 5’7″ and leaves us bereft of a good story.
Great market! Great photos! Thanks, PortMoresby.