Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye

Start with the colour. Warm red brick runs in bands between pale cut stone, and the whole building glows a little in the afternoon light. Underfoot, gravel crunches. Somewhere beyond the walls, the trees of a great forest move in the wind. You are standing at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, in the town of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a short trip from Rueil-Malmaison across the bends of the Seine. For centuries, this hilltop was one of the favourite homes of the kings of France.

The location explains a great deal. The château sits on a high plateau above a loop of the river. To the west lies the Forest of Saint-Germain, a royal hunting ground for generations. To the east, the land falls away toward Paris. A king here could hunt in the morning and watch his capital on the horizon by evening. A royal residence stood on this spot as early as the twelfth century, and the site grew with each reign that followed.

The oldest part you can still see is the chapel. It was built in the thirteenth century under Louis the Ninth, the king later known as Saint Louis. Here is the first surprise. This chapel is older than the famous Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, the jewel of glass and stone on the Île de la Cité. Many historians see this chapel at Saint-Germain as an early model for that later masterpiece. Look for its tall windows and slender Gothic lines, set among the later brick walls.

Much of the medieval castle suffered during the Hundred Years War, the long conflict between France and England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The building you see today owes its shape to King Francis the First. From 1539, he had the old castle rebuilt in the fashion of the French Renaissance. That means a style inspired by Italian ideas of order and symmetry, adapted to French tastes. The architect most closely linked to this work is Pierre Chambiges.

Notice the plan of the courtyard. It is not a neat square. It is an irregular five-sided shape, because the builders reused the old medieval foundations. Then lift your eyes to the roofline. Instead of the steep slate roofs common in French castles, the château is topped with a flat stone terrace. This was an unusual choice in its day. The terrace gave the court a promenade in the sky, with long views over the river valley.

This was a family home for royalty, and children grew up here. Mary, Queen of Scots, spent part of her childhood at the French court, and Saint-Germain was one of the places where that court lived. Then, in 1638, a long-awaited heir was born on the royal estate. That baby became Louis the Fourteenth, the Sun King. He was baptised in the chapel, and for many years Saint-Germain was his principal residence.

The Sun King left his mark on the landscape too. Walk out toward the edge of the gardens and you reach the Grande Terrasse, the great terrace designed by André Le Nôtre. He is the same garden designer who later shaped the gardens of Versailles. The terrace runs along the edge of the plateau for well over two kilometres, a long straight walk lined with trees. On one side is the drop to the Seine. On the other, the shade of the forest.

The view from that terrace is the second surprise for many visitors. On a clear day, you can see the towers of La Défense, the business district of Paris, rising in glass and steel. Further along the skyline, people often spot the Eiffel Tower. Kings once looked across this same valley at a city of church spires. Today the horizon shows the modern capital, and the contrast is part of the pleasure of standing here.

In 1682, Louis the Fourteenth moved the court permanently to Versailles. Saint-Germain lost its central role, but it did not stay empty. The Sun King offered the château to his cousin, King James the Second of England, who had lost his throne in 1688. James lived here in exile with his court for the rest of his life. He died at Saint-Germain in 1701. For a time, this French castle was the home of a deposed English and Scottish royal family.

The following centuries were harder on the building. After the French Revolution, the château served very different purposes, including use as a military school and later as a prison. Rooms were divided, decorations were lost, and the brick and stone wore down. The château you see now is largely the result of a careful restoration in the nineteenth century, carried out to return the building to its Renaissance appearance.

That restoration had a new purpose. In 1862, Emperor Napoleon the Third decided to turn the château into a museum of national antiquities, and it opened to the public a few years later. Today it is the National Archaeology Museum of France. Inside are objects from the very long story of people in France, from the Stone Age through the Celtic Gauls to the early Middle Ages. Among its best-known treasures is a tiny carved ivory head of a woman, often called the Lady of Brassempouy, thousands of years old.

The château also has a place in the twentieth century. In 1919, after the First World War, a peace treaty with Austria was signed here. It is known as the Treaty of Saint-Germain, and it helped redraw the map of central Europe. So this building connects medieval kings, the Sun King, an exiled English monarch, and the diplomats who reshaped Europe after a world war. All of that history passed through these courtyards.

The town around the château is worth a slow walk. Streets of pale stone houses, cafés and small shops lead away from the château square. The composer Claude Debussy was born in this town in 1862, the same year the museum project began. Many visitors combine the château with a walk along the terrace and then a coffee in the old centre, before returning toward Rueil-Malmaison or Paris.

Before you move on, take one more look at the walls in front of you. See the pattern of red brick and pale stone, the tall chimneys, the edge of that flat roof against the sky. Listen to the gravel, the birds in the trees, perhaps the distant sound of a train arriving below. Kings, exiles and archaeologists have all stood roughly where you stand now. As you walk toward the terrace, let the view open slowly, and see the city appear on the horizon.