Experience Ile de France

Kings, clerics, paupers, and ordinary Parisians have long taken refuge from urban life in Ile-de-France, the green surround of Paris. Most have been content to spend a day in the country, which is lushly forested and islanded by meandering rivers, while others have left behind spectacular secular and religious monuments. Biggest and most ostentatious of the Ile's palaces, the Château de Versailles is pompous proof that French monarchs lost their heads long before Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, the last occupants, walked to the guillotine. Other palatial piles include Fontainebleau, Vaux-le-Vicomte, and Napoléon's Malmaison. All this worldly froth fades in the stained-glass luster of Chartres Cathedral, so sublime its soft limestone hulk has brought the faithful to their knees for centuries. Then skip over the centuries to discover Monet's Giverny and Van Gogh's Auvers.