Vaux-le-Vicomte, Ile-de-France

Vaux-le-Vicomte has a very limited opening season in winter – a couple of weekends in November and December, and then a Christmas opening from the 20th of December to the 4th of January 2015. It is famous for its Christmas decorations, so I bought a ticket on-line, and made sure that this time I understood the shuttle timetable – otherwise it’s a taxi each way for the 8km to and from the Chateau. Getting a taxi from Melun railway station is easy, getting one to come out to the Chateau in the dark can be problematic. But this time around, the shuttle is running roughly every hour (8 Euros return), and seats 28 people. Not full at all for the journey out at 1.30pm, but only 2 seats free on the 5pm departure. The next and last shuttle was at 6pm if I’d missed the 5pm.

The Chateau is decorated as if for a lavish Christmas party. Fires burn in the grates of each room, which are darkened to better display the decorations.

Each room is beautifully decorated as shown in the galleries below. There is some unfortunate taxidermy included in the decorations. The deer pass inspection, but the poor rabbit with a tiny baby rabbit looks decidedly the worse for wear.

Chambre des Muses

Antichambre d’Hercule

Le Chambre du Roi (The King’s Room)

Bibliotheque (The Library)

Grand Salon

Salles des Buffets (The Dining Rooms)

The magnificent dining table features towers of Laduree macarons and beautiful decorations for the 10 place settings.

The kitchen is preparing for a banquet, with a wild boar waiting to roasted, pheasants and chickens turning on the spit, and winter vegetables on the table.

The vestibule next to the kitchen area has a life size Marquis and Marquess made entirely out of chocolate, by master chocolatier Leonidas. Everything is made of chocolate – the chair the woman is sitting on, the dais is made of chocolate with a platform of 2300 wrapped pralines to form the floor. It has taken 500kg and 300 hundred of hours of work to produce this work of art in chocolate.

Outside, the ponds are beginning to freeze over, with all except one fountain turned off to protect the kilometres of water pipes in the estate.

The Chateau is open from spring through autumn, and is lit by the light of 2000 candles in the summer evenings, which is well worth going to. Next visit I must take a car and stay near Fontainebleau, and not be a slave to public transport to and from Paris!