Château de Chenonceau

The Château de Chenonceau is a château spanning the River Cher, near the small village of Chenonceaux in the Indre-et-Loire département of the Loire Valley in France. It is one of the best-known châteaux of the Loire valley. The estate of Chenonceau is first mentioned in writing in the 11th century. In the 13th century, the fief of Chenonceau belonged to the Marques family. The original château was torched in 1412 to punish owner Jean Marques for an act of sedition. He rebuilt a château and fortified mill on the site in the 1430s however Jean Marques’s indebted heir Pierre Marques found it necessary to sell. Thomas Bohier, Chamberlain to King Charles VIII of France, purchased the castle from Pierre Marques in 1513 (leading to 2013 being considered the 500th anniversary of the castle: MDXIII–MMXIII.) Bohier demolished the castle, though its 15th-century keep was left standing, and built an entirely new residence between 1515 and 1521. The work was overseen by his wife Katherine Briçonnet,who delighted in hosting French nobility, including King Francis I on two occasions. The château built on the foundations of an old mill was later extended to span the river. The bridge over the river was built (1556-1559) to designs by the French Renaissance architect Philibert de l’Orme, and the gallery on the bridge, built from 1570–1576 to designs by Jean Bullant.

Plan of the main block, engraved by Du Cerceau (1579)

The women of Chenonceau

Diane de Poitiers 1499 – 1566

In 1535 the château was seized from Bohier’s son by King Francis I of France for unpaid debts to the Crown; after Francis’ death in 1547, Henry II offered the château as a gift to his mistress, Diane de Poitiers, who became fervently attached to the château along the river. In 1555 she commissioned Philibert de l’Orme to build the arched bridge joining the château to its opposite bank. Diane then oversaw the planting of extensive flower and vegetable gardens along with a variety of fruit trees. Set along the banks of the river, but buttressed from flooding by stone terraces, the exquisite gardens were laid out in four triangles.

Diane de Poitiers was the unquestioned mistress of the castle, but ownership remained with the crown until 1555, when years of delicate legal maneuvers finally yielded possession to her.

Catherine de’ Medici 1519 – 1589

After King Henry II died in 1559, his strong-willed widow and regent Catherine de’ Medici forced Diane to exchange it for the Château Chaumont. Queen Catherine then made Chenonceau her own favorite residence, adding a new series of gardens.

As Regent of France, Catherine spent a fortune on the château and on spectacular nighttime parties. In 1560, the first ever fireworks display seen in France took place during the celebrations marking the ascension to the throne of Catherine’s son Francis II. The grand gallery was completed in 1577 to close in the existing bridge and Catherine also added rooms between the chapel and the library on the east side of the corps de logis, as well as a service wing on the west side of the entry courtyard.

Catherine considered an even greater expansion of the château, shown in an engraving published by Jacques Androuet du Cerceau in the second (1579) volume of his book Les plus excellents bastiments de France. If this project had been executed, the current château would have been only a small portion of an enormous manor laid out “like pincers around the existing buildings.”

Project for the expansion of the château from Du Cerceau’s 1579 book

Louise of Lorraine 1553 – 1601

On Catherine’s death in 1589 the château went to her daughter-in-law, Louise de Lorraine-Vaudémont, wife of King Henry III. It was at Chenonceau that Louise was told of her husband’s assassination in 1589. She withdrew to the château and went into mourning, in white, as required by court protocol. Forgotten by all, she had trouble maintaining her queen-dowager life style. She devoted her time to reading, charity work and prayer.

Gabrielle d’Estrées

Henri IV obtained Chenonceau for his mistress Gabrielle d’Estrées by paying the debts of Catherine de’ Medici, which had been inherited by Louise and were threatening to ruin her. In return Louise left the château to her niece Françoise de Lorraine, at that time six years old and betrothed to the four-year-old César de Bourbon, duc de Vendôme, the natural son of Gabrielle d’Estrées and Henri IV. The château belonged to the Duc de Vendôme and his descendants for more than a hundred years. The Bourbons had little interest in the château, except for hunting. In 1650, Louis XIV was the last king of the ancien régime to visit.

The Château de Chenonceau was bought by the Duke of Bourbon in 1720. Little by little, he sold off all of the castle’s contents. Many of the fine statues ended up at Versailles.

Louise Dupin 1706 – 1799

In the 18th century Louise Dupin gave renewed splendor to the château. She started an outstanding salon with the elite among writers, poets, scientists and philosophers, such as Montesquieu, Voltaire or Rousseau. A wise protector of Chenonceau, she managed to save the château during the Revolution.

Marguerite Pelouze 1836 – 1902

In the 19th century, Marguerite Pelouze, descended from the industrial bourgeoisie, decided in 1864 to transform the monument and its gardens according to her taste for luxury. She spent a fortune on restoring the estate to the time period of Diane de Poitiers. Chenonceau was sold once, and then again in 1913.

Simonne Menier 1881 – 1972

During the First World War far from the trenches Chenonceau also knew the troubles of wartime. Simone Menier transformed and equipped the gallery into a hospital at her family’s own expense and over 2 000 wounded were cared for up to 1918. Her bravery led her to carry out numerous actions for the resistance during the Second World War (1939-1945).

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Official guide

Ussé

Around the year 1,000 AD the region of Touraine was prey to incessant fighting between its rivals. Gelduin I decided to build a stronghold of wood and stone, perched like an eagle’s nest on the side of the hill and backing on to the fantastic forest of Chinon. The site was strategic and as time went by this fortress became the foundation for the construction of a new castle. The first alterations, making the castle less of a fortress and more of a beautiful and spiritual place, were carried out by Jean V de Bueil. He was a supporter of Joan of Arc, the “Scourge of the English”, and his son married one the daughters of Charles VII and Agnès Sorel. This was the beginning of the château we see today, with the prison tower and the first chapel at its centre. In the 15th century, entry to the château was still made across a drawbridge spanning a moat.

A château destined for gracious living

In the 16th century, Charles D’Espinay and Lucrèce de Pons oversaw the construction of the central part of the castle, the first part of the right wing and the chapel. But it is in the 17th century that the castle was transformed into a place of residence with the addition of a charming pavilion built to celebrate the marriage of Maréchal de Vauban’s daughter and the Marquis de Valentinay who was the owner’s son and King Louis XIV’s Controller-General of Finances. It was thanks to the King’s patronage that the château was honoured and became a marquisate. The French formal garden, designed by le Nôtre and terraced by Vauban added the finishing touches and finally transformed the château into an enchanting residence.

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Google Maps – Château d’Ussé

Villandry

From the Villandry Official Website

Villandry is one of the great chateaux built on the banks of the Loire during the Renaissance. It has the distinctive feature of being the residence of neither a king nor a courtesan, but of Jean Le Breton, Minister of Finance for François I.

At Villandry, Jean Le Breton drew on his exceptional architectural experience acquired on a large number of sites, including the Chateau of Chambord, which he supervised and directed on behalf of the Crown over many years.

When he arrived in Villandry in 1532, he had the old feudal fortress razed to the ground, except for the keep, a dramatic testimony to the conference held on 4 July 1189 at which Henry II of England (Henry Plantagenet) admitted his defeat before King Philip Augustus of France, signing the treaty known as “La Paix de Colombiers ” (The Peace of Colombiers) two days before he died.

In place of the fortress, he had three apparently simple main structures built adjoining the keep, to form a horseshoe opening onto the valley through which the Cher and the Loire flow. Arcades, mullioned windows surrounded by richly decorated pilasters, high lucarnes with sculpted curves and broad, steeply sloping slate roofs frame a main courtyard in proportions of rare elegance, the whole stamped with the architectural principle of the period: symmetry.

Despite being nearby and almost contemporary to Azay-le-Rideau, at Villandry the Italian influences and medieval references – turrets, pinnacles, decorative machicolations – completely disappeared to make way for a simpler, purely French style which, in particular as regards the form of the roofs, prefigured Anet, Fontainebleau and what was to become Henry IV style. Villandry’s originality lies not only in its avant-garde architectural design; it is also to be found in the use made of the site on which it was built, in complete harmony with nature and stone, with gardens of outstanding beauty.

However as a result of architectural changes made in the 18th century, the Renaissance chateau had lost its character and remained that way until 1906. In the early 20th century, Dr Joachim Carvallo and his wife Ann Coleman, heir to an American iron and steel empire, purchased Villandry. Leaving behind the laboratories of the Paris Faculty of Medicine where, a favourite disciple of Charles Richet (winner of the Nobel Prize in 1913), he was conducting advanced research into the physiology of digestion, Carvallo put all his energies and fortune into restoring Villandry to its former glory. With the help of a team of 100 stonemasons, he returned the chateau’s façades to their Renaissance beauty.

The gardens of Villandry above, before restoration to their Renaissance glory by Carvallo

The acquisition of Villandry by Joachim Carvallo marked a return to their roots for the gardens. Already known for their beauty in the Renaissance, different owners successively transformed them, now into a formal garden, now a romantic garden. With a scientist’s meticulousness, Carvallo recreated gardens that were worthy of the restored chateau. The gardens had changed drastically over time. Ever since the construction of the Chateau of Villandry in 1532, outstanding gardens had embellished the building. The passage of time and changing fashions meant they underwent drastic changes in appearance. Archeological findings tell us how, in the Renaissance, there was a decorative kitchen garden at close proximity to the chateau.

In the 18th century, the grounds were enlarged and enriched with a formal garden, then an ornamental lake in the shape of a Louis XV mirror. When Joachim Carvallo visited Villandry in 1906, he found: « The grounds [are] landscaped in the English style, all undulations and hillocks (…), planted with a good many recently imported exotic species – cedars, pines, thujas, magnolias – set in clumps on the slopes of artificial mounds. The chateau itself [is lost] in a forest of trees and greenery. »

The romantic English garden was not to Carvallo’s taste and, between 1908 and 1918, he devoted himself to recreating the Renaissance gardens. He felt that the now restored Renaissance chateau ought to have fitting gardens. As a man of science, he used a scientific approach to assemble a series of archeological and literary clues. By comparing the remains of walls and pipes against old plans, such as those of the Marquis de Castellane and the Napoleonic land register, Carvallo was able to recreate the decorative kitchen garden, while works like Les Plus Excellents bâtiments de France or the Monasticon Gallicanum gave him an idea of Renaissance landscaping. To recreate the ornamental salons on their original terraces, he called on the painter Lozano and Spanish artist and landscape architect Javier de Winthuysen to design the salon of the crosses and the salon of love. The salon of music was designed by Joachim himself. For the ‘classical’ water garden, typical of the 18th century, he used the Marquis of Castellane’s plans, preserved in the Napoleonic land register.
Far from being a mere replica of gardens reproduced in architectural treatises, the gardens of Villandry are a reinvention. From their layout to the choice of vegetables, everything was conceived in terms of a return to the origins of the Renaissance formal garden.

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Google Maps – Villandry

Maine et Loire 49

Maine-et-Loire is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790. Originally it was called Mayenne-et-Loire, but its name was changed to Maine-et-Loire in 1791. It was created from most of the former province of Anjou. Its present name is drawn from the Maine and Loire Rivers, which meet within the department.

Maine et Loire

Map of Maine et Loire

Loire-Atlantique 44

Loire-Atlantique is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790. Originally, it was named Loire-Inférieure, but its name was changed in 1957 to Loire-Atlantique.

The area is part of the historical Duchy of Brittany, and contains what many people still consider to be Brittany’s capital, Nantes. However, when the system of French Regions was reviewed by the Vichy Government, the department was excluded from the Region of Brittany and included in the newly created Pays de la Loire Region.

While these administrative changes were reversed after the war, they were re-implemented in the 1955 boundary changes intended to optimise the management of the regions. There has since been a series of campaigns reflecting a strong local mood to have the department reintegrated with Brittany.

Nantes is nestled on the Loire estuary, the longest river in France and last wild river in Europe. Here, the river is still influenced by the tides, and flows in both directions! The giant cranes still bear witness to the intense port activity which the city experienced up until the mid-20^th century. Nowadays, the Loire acts as a backdrop for cultural activities, provides a haven for protected animals and plants and beckons people to enjoy the nearby beaches and coastline for relaxing or water sports.

As a city that was once home to the Dukes of Brittany, Nantes – a city which is Breton at heart – embodies the history of an area of transition between the countryside and the sea, between Brittany and the Loire, and between the roots of identity and the openness to discovery.

Google Maps – Loire Atlantique

Centre

Lying to the southwest of Paris, the Centre region takes in the most visited part of the Loire valley, and areas to the north and to the south. As well as the most popular of the Loire valley chateaux, it also includes the forests of the Sologne, south of the Loire, and the gentle hills and valleys of the Berry region, to the south.

Largest cities

Pont Wilson, Tours

Google Maps – Centre

Pays de la Loire

The Pays de la Loire region is a recent creation, not one of France’s historic regions. Indeed, the regional capital, Nantes, was once the capital of Brittany – to which it no longer belongs. In historic terms, Pays de la Loire covers parts of the old provinces of Brittany, Anjou, Maine and Poitou. The Pays de la Loire covers the area to the south of Brittany and Normandy, along the lower stretches of the river Loire, the longest river in France.
The region is composed of five departments, two of them coastal – the Loire Atlantique (44) and the Vendée (85) – and three of them inland, the Mayenne (53), the Sarthe (72) and the Maine et Loire (49).

Map of Pays de la Loire

Loire Atlantique

Nantes (44), the regional capital is the sixth largest city in France, with 270,000 inhabitants in the urban borough of Nantes, and an estimated 800,000 inhabitants in the urban area as of 2008. It is located on the Loire, 50 km inland, and is the largest economic hub in the north west of France. In the eighteenth century, Nantes (like Bristol) was a flourishing seaport, indeed the most important seaport in France; the city acquired great wealth at that time, wealth which is reflected to this day in its urban heritage. Today, most of the shipping activity has moved to the mouth of the Loire, to the port of Saint Nazaire, which is also one of the major ship-building cities in Europe. It was in the Saint Nazaire dockyards that the new flagship of the Cunard line, the world’s largest passenger ship, the Queen Mary 2, was built. A clear birds-eye view of the shipyards can be had from the Pont de Saint Nazaire, the high road bridge that spans the Loire estuary. (Originally a toll bridge, this bridge is now free to cross).
On the coast of the Loire Atlantique department lie two of France’s historic seaside resorts, La Baule and Le Croisic. The area round Le Croisic is also famous for its salt pans, and “sel de Guérande” is one of the best-known types of salt in France. The town of Guérande is a delightful small ancient walled city, just inland from the salt marshes.

Vendée

South of the Loire Atlantique department lies an area known as Vendée. The modern department (85) is much smaller than the historic area that once carried this name. Vendée is famous in the history of France as one of the old bastions of Protestantism; after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, and the end of religious tolerance, tens of thousands of Vendéen protestants fled from this part of France, and went to live in England, or America. Thus many people in England can trace some of their ancestry back to this part of France.
After the French Revolution, Vendée was a centre for the royalist counter-revolution.
The department is largely flat in the northern coastal area, low-lying and gently undulating inland. The capital, the city of La Roche sur Yon, is a small rural city in the middle of the department. The coast is built up round the seaside resorts, notably the fine beaches at les Sables d’Olonne, Saint Gilles Croix-de-Vie and St. Jean de Monts, but elsewhere there are stretches of empty coastline. In parts, a band of pine forests, planted on land that was once sand dunes, protects the flat farmland behind from the Atlantic winds and the sand – and protects it against flooding when Atlantic storms batter the coastline.

Maine et Loire

Further inland, the department of Maine et Loire (49) covers a territory to the north and south of the Loire.This is the heart of the region known as Anjou, and its capital Angers is one of the great historic cities in the Loire valley. Anjou was the fief of the Angevins, better known as the Plantagenets, who, starting with Henry II, ruled England for three centuries. The great castle of the counts of Anjou, in Angers, is one of the biggest medieval fortresses in Europe. Henry II, his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, and their son Richard the Lionheart are buried at the Abbey of Fontevraud, between Saumur and Chinon.

Sarthe & Mayenne

The two remaining departments of this region, Sarthe (72) and Mayenne (53) form the rest of the old provinces of Anjou and Maine, and border on Normandy. Rural departments, and strongly agricultural, they both have more in common with Normandy than they do with Vendée. Half the population of the department of the Sarthe lives in the urban area round the capital, Le Mans, famous for its annual motor race. Apart from that, the Sarthe is deeply rural. La Flèche, an attractive small town on the river Loir (without an -e !) boasts one of the best and oldest zoos in France, coverning some 30 acres. Laval, capital of the Mayenne, is a small city with a historic centre. The city is located on the banks of the river Mayenne, which crosses the department from north to south, a navigable waterway with opportunities for boat hire, and 85 km of towpath idel for cyclists and hikers. The department of the Mayenne also boasts the highest point in the northwest quarter of France, the summit of the Mont des Avaloirs, at 417 metres, about 1350 ft.

Map of the Pays de la Loire with its five departments

showing the provinces that existed on its territory in the XVIII century.

Google Maps – Pays de la Loire

Nantes

Before my arrival in Nantes, France I was surprised by the nod of approval given by French people in Australia. It has a population of 200,000 people making it lively while retaining a beautiful sense of space and though one of my earliest experiences of small French cities, I expect Nantes to remain as my benchmark for assessing the quality of life in all other places.

History (Britannica)

Nantes, city, Loire-Atlantique département, Pays de la Loire région, western France. Nantes is situated at the head of the estuary of the Loire River, where it is joined by the Erdre and the Sèvre rivers, 35 miles (56 km) from the sea and southwest of Paris. It is one of the French towns that has changed the most in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Nantes derives its name from the Namnètes, a Gallic tribe who made it their capital. It became a commercial centre under the Romans. The Normans, after pillaging the town, occupied it from 834 to 936. After a long struggle in the Middle Ages between the counts of Nantes and Rennes for the sovereignty of Brittany, in 1560, Francis II, king of France (1559–60), granted Nantes a communal constitution. During the Wars of Religion (1562–98), Nantes joined the Catholic League and only opened its gates to Henry IV, king of France (1589–1610), in 1598, the same year he signed the Edict of Nantes, a charter assuring religious and civil liberties to the Protestants. During the French Revolution, Nantes suffered the ruthless repression of an envoy of the revolutionary Committee of Public Safety named Jean-Baptiste Carrier. In 1793 Carrier replaced executions by the guillotine, which he considered too slow, with mass drownings. The city was occupied by the Germans during World War II.

Greatly modified by an urban renewal plan that was adopted in 1920, Nantes was further altered and extended after having been partly destroyed in World War II. In the 1960s Nantes was designated as one of the eight provincial counterweights to reduce the dominance of Paris on French national life. It has become a dynamic regional centre, with a diversified economic structure. Traditional industries such as food processing, engineering, and the manufacture of components for the aeronautical industry remain important, but recent growth has occurred in fields such as biotechnology. A large scientific park, created in 1987, was designed to foster these activities. Nantes is also a major business centre and is the home of many regional headquarters of both industrial and services firms. A number of public and private sector offices have relocated from Paris to the city. Nantes has a large higher education section. The original university (founded 1460) was abolished during the French Revolution, but a new one was established in 1961. Tourism has been stimulated by redevelopment of part of the former docklands and the building of specialized conference facilities.

Although the cathedral of Saint-Pierre was built between the 15th and 20th centuries, it retains a Gothic unity. The imposing facade (1434–1508) has three finely sculptured doorways and two high towers. The cathedral, bombed during World War II, had been nearly completely restored in 1972 when a fire largely destroyed the roof. The magnificent Renaissance tomb of Francis II, duke of Brittany (ruled 1458–88), was luckily unharmed. The medieval castle had been rebuilt in 1466 by this same Francis II. Viewed from without, it looks like a fort with crenellated towers, but the inner courtyard is a typical Renaissance palace. The Musée des Beaux-Arts has one of the most important and varied collections of paintings in France. Pop. (1999) 261,576; (2014 est.) 298,029.