Fontainebleau

Fontainebleau needs 1 day: the royal château, inhabited almost continuously by French monarchs for over 700 years -longer than Versailles-, with its iconic horseshoe-shaped entrance staircase, in a morning walk, and a hiking or bouldering trail in the Fontainebleau forest, one of the world's most renowned bouldering destinations, in the afternoon. April-October is best. It's mid-priced by French standards. Napoleon called it the «house of the centuries» for having been home to nearly every French monarch since the Middle Ages, and it was there that he signed his first abdication in 1814.