Plan your visit
Forêt de Fontainebleau is one of France’s great natural sites — bring good shoes and a camera. Locate it on the map, book a room nearby in a click, or add it to your travel list to build your itinerary.
About Forêt de Fontainebleau
On the doorstep of Paris around the great royal château, the Forêt de Fontainebleau is one of the most beautiful and beloved forests in France — a vast expanse of ancient oak, beech and pine scattered with extraordinary sandstone boulders and rocky heaths. Long a royal hunting ground and later the haunt of the Barbizon painters, who came here to paint nature from life, it is criss-crossed by hundreds of kilometres of marked trails. Above all it is the birthplace of bouldering: climbers from around the world come to test themselves on its sculpted sandstone "blocs", following circuits threaded through the trees. Rich in wildlife and dappled light, easy to reach yet genuinely wild, Fontainebleau is the green lung and playground of the Île-de-France.