Near Melun, 28 miles southeast of Paris, lies Vaux-le-Vicomte, one of France great baroque châteaux. Its colorful history, apart from its face, is so extraordinary that it needs to be known beforehand. The land itself was bought in 1641 by Louis XIV‘s power-hungry minister of finance. Regent of France until Louis XIV came of age, Fouquet was also a great patron of the arts and passed on some of his immense fortune to the likes Molière, La Fontaine, and Madame de Sévigné.
In the château itself, after entering through the hall with its 12 Doric columns don’t miss the Salon des Muses, with the Brun‘s painted ceilings illustrating nine different muses. Here Molière and his troupe acted L’Ecole des Maris for the first time, with Queen Henrietta-Maria of England and Fouquet as audience.
