For most of my life in France, Paris was my compass. I taught at the Nouvelle Sorbonne and Sciences Po and lived just outside the city, close enough to feel its constant pulse. I drew energy from its rhythm, its lectures and cafés, its insistence on momentum. Which is why it still surprises me that my husband Pierre and I left that all behind for a 17th-century château in the Loire Valley. In Paris, my mind was always moving ahead, cataloguing lectures, meetings, errands, and ideas I wanted to explore. Here, there was nothing pressing, nothing urgent, and that empty space made me notice how I thought. Thoughts that normally skittered past caught themselves mid-flight, lingering long enough for me to consider them: memories of my childhood in Australia, music I had been playing, questions about the life we were beginning in this new place. It was strange, unsettling, and quietly exhilarating to feel my mind slowing, stretching, and expanding in ways I hadn’t realized it could.

I became aware of the rhythm of my breathing, of the subtle warmth of the stone under my hands, of the almost imperceptible shifts in light across the château walls. I noticed the crunch of my footsteps on the gravel, the whisper of the wind through the trees. For the first time in years, I could feel the shape of my thoughts as they moved, how they curved and bent around the silence instead of rushing past it. I realized I was paying attention not just to the world outside, but to the inner world that had been quieted by the constant pace of the city.

It was in that stillness that the château first revealed itself—not just its history, its stones, or its chapel, but the way it invited observation, reflection, and imagination. Every carved cross, every moss-softened stone, every mark etched by centuries of hands waited to be noticed. And when I finally looked up from my own thoughts, the fields blurred in the sun, the air thick with the scent of dry grass, the trees alive with birdsong. The silence remained, but it was no longer empty—it was full of possibilities I hadn’t seen before.

What drew us to Détilly wasn’t grandeur but the odd, intimate details that made the place human. The medieval chapel, dedicated to Notre-Dame de la Pitié and Saint Marc, bears crosses carved by the Knights Templar, reminders that this stretch of the Vienne River was once more frontier than refuge. I don’t consider myself mystical, but stepping into that space, I felt its weight. The chapel isn’t solemn so much as steady, a sanctuary where centuries and everyday life meet.

That same sense of continuity shaped how we saw our role here. From the start, we never felt like owners. We are caretakers—of leaking roofs, moss-softened stones, and a story that began long before us. Our Irish wolfhounds seem to know this better than anyone. Ramsès roams the grounds like a watchman, while his son, Aramis Destilly, lingers by the chapel door as if tuned to something the rest of us only half-hear.

Of course, history here isn’t just romance—it’s cracked stone, doors that stick, and roofs that groan under winter rain. Preservation is rarely dramatic; it’s patience, repetition, and learning to live with the slow, uneven tempo of a place that’s seen far more seasons than we have.

At Détilly, imagination rises differently. One afternoon I sat watching light shift across the west-facing chapel door, and from that stillness a scene for a novel took shape—something I never would have found in Paris’s constant rush. Guests at our summer writers’ retreat often feel it too. One, standing beneath the old arch, said she felt “history leaning close, but kindly.” Another, after an evening in the garden, told me she had “heard my thoughts for the first time in months.” I know what they mean. The château doesn’t just provide a backdrop—it participates.

And yet, the château’s voice is just as present in the mundane. The real surprise isn’t that we moved here, but that we’ve come to love the small, daily negotiations: coaxing life from a sulky boiler, finding warmth in stone that holds the cold, and tackling repairs that never quite end. None of this was in our plan, and maybe that’s why it feels so alive. There’s something steadying in that work, a quiet satisfaction that comes from tending to the place rather than simply fixing it. It isn’t about efficiency anymore, but about learning to move in step with the château’s slower rhythm, letting its needs shape the pace of our days—and, eventually, shape us.

Living at Détilly keeps us asking: What does it mean to dwell inside history? How do you make a life in walls that have already sheltered so many others? We don’t have the answers. For now, we walk the grounds with the dogs, patch the roof when it leaks, welcome guests when the season allows, and watch evening light pour through the chapel door.

Maybe that’s enough—to live alongside the past, not only to look at it, with all its imperfections, its demands, and the quiet rewards that come when you stop trying to shape a place and let it shape you.

Château de Détilly, 18 Rue des Fromentaux, 37420 Beaumont-en-Véron, is located near where the Vienne River joins the Loire, 5 miles from Chinon.

© 2025, Grahame Elliott

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Corinne LaBalme left the high-end northern real estate of the Loire Valley far behind when she trained down from Paris to the rust-belt town of Saint-Etienne, Loire’s capital. She then started an off-track journey to a château that hosts a family-friendly classical music and dance festival and discovered some of the region’s rural and natural delights along the way.

The Château: La Bâtie d’Urfé

King François I, the patron of Leonardo da Vinci, appointed his close friend Charles d’Urfé, Bailiff of the Forez region, to represent the crown at the Council of Trent in 1545. Quite like his king, Charles came down with a severe case of Renaissance Fever while in Italy. On his return to the Loire region, he embarked on an enthusiastic makeover of the family estate that channeled the intellectual, humanist ethos of the age into stone and stucco.

Creating this unique Franco-Italian Renaissance château, which included a 4,600-book library protected by a benevolent sphinx statue, effectively bankrupted his family. His descendants sold off everything that wasn’t nailed down and certainly did not have the cash for extensive remodeling.

That’s why the Bâtie d’Urfé in Saint-Etienne-le-Molard has the only surviving 16th century grotto in France (detail at top of article). These rustic stone structures, decorated with rocaille (seashell-and-gravel mosaics) were trendy décor musts in the era. Given that they are so sturdy, it’s rather surprising that more of them haven’t stood the test of time. But trends being what they are, the noble grotto faded from fashion as the French garden took shape.

This one, renovated in 2008, would have been remarkable in any case. Charles d’Urfé was a staunch Catholic who was nevertheless imbued with the ecumenical, open-minded spirit of the age. His grotto, which leads to the family chapel, is decorated with pre-Christian iconography. Neptune, for instance, is treated with the greatest of esteem.

The chapel’s theme is the Holy Communion. As the point is made with Old Testament scenes, the golden captions to the artwork are respectfully written in Hebrew. The elegant chapel bore the brunt of the family’s garage sales, but an enterprising local historical/archeological society, La Diana, tracked down many of the chapel’s missing parts and restored/replaced them as needed. (More about La Diana below.) Don’t forget to look up at the ceiling vaults, daringly decorated with exotic New World vegetables like corn.

Speaking of food, there’s a delightful locovore restaurant (with outdoor and indoor tables) on the premises, offering a budget friendly prix-fixe meal to which you might add a bottle of the easy-drinking local chardonnay Clos de Chozieux.

The Festival: Estival de la Bâtie

“We don’t want people to feel afraid of classical music,” says pianist/composer Pascal Amoyal, one of the two guardian angels of this low-key, eight-year-old festival. The festival will be held on the grounds of the château from July 5 to 22 this year. The engagingly ambitious program includes an updated concert version of The Enchanted Flute (sung in French), pioneering Flamenco artist Rocio Marquez, Algerian composer/guitarist Souad Massi, and the opening night Berlioz/Ravel/Dvorak concert by the OSE ! Symphonic Orchestra.

Circus acts, puppet shows and games aimed at children and their parents are scheduled for weekend afternoons in the castle’s gardens throughout the festival.

As a side-note, the austerely symmetrical Renaissance gardens inspired Claude’s grandson, Honoré d’Urfé (1568-1625) to write the 5,000-page love story, Astrée, a best-seller of the day that’s arguably credited as the first French novel.

The Historical Society: La Diana

The Bâtie d’Urfé would have fallen into ruin if not for the dedication of the local historical society, La Diana, based in the nearby medieval town of Montbrison. Montbrison, population 17,000, boasts 18 listed monuments, and fittingly the rarest and most unusual of these, an early 14th-century vaulted heraldic ceiling, is located in La Diana’s headquarters.

Roughly 1,700 emblems of the local nobility are painted on separate wooden panels. These served as the who’s who of the time and no fortified town in the Middle Ages would have been complete without its salle héraldique presenting the coat of arms of feudal families.

Fires, floods, termites and fashion often decimated these once-ubiquitous wooden tributes to the status quo. (Viollet-le-Duc’s heavily-restored version at the Château de Pierrefonds north of Paris is the closest that most architecture fans have ever come to seeing one.) Miraculously, the Montbrison ceiling at La Diana survived intact with its original paintwork, despite the room’s post-revolutionary incarnation as a livery stable. It’s open to the public on Wednesday and Saturday.

Ever the historical detectives, La Diana has traced a few precious, missing elements of the Bâtie d’Urfé chapel to the Metropolitan Museum in New York. They would very much like them back. If you have any Met connections…

And if you’re stopping in a bistro for a snack, don’t forget to order some fourme de Montbrison, the local blue-veined cow cheese.

Nature Walks

While it’s not necessary to go all Dr. Livingston and track the Loire to its source (unless you’d like to visit a 1950s hydro-electric dam along the way), the southern Loire offers spectacular scenery thanks to an 877-acre nature reserve with plentiful hiking trails.

The park is noted for its birds of prey, playful otters and rare dragonflies. Several of the prettiest, two- and three-hour hikes start out at the Maison de la Réserve Naturelle Régionale des gorges de la Loire in Saint-Victor-sur-Loire, a fortified medieval village located ten kilometers from Saint-Etienne. An alternate way to view these unspoiled river canyons and wooded Forez hills is on a lunchtime cruise. https://croisieres-gorges-loire.fr

Saint-Victor also has a man-made surprise: a charming granite chapel. The chapel boasts a 17th-century altar made of gilded wood and Cordoba leather, possibly the only surviving altar of this type north of the Pyrenees.

Lodging and Food

The Romans came to Saint-Galmier for the thermal baths, and the sparkling water that still gushes from the earth here is marketed across the world in forest-green Badoit bottles. Today it makes a fine home-base for exploring the area.

The 4-star Hôtel La Charpinière proves how reasonably priced a fine stay in the French countryside can be. With double rooms under 150€, guests profit from a swimming pool, a beauty spa, a well-equipped gym with personal trainers, and two restaurants. The “gourmet” dining room features foie gras with rhubarb and fish with wasabi sauce but given that this is cow-country, the aged steaks and country fries in the brasserie may be even more tempting. Specify one of the spacious “Privilège” rooms (e.g. room 215) with walk-in Italian showers and king-size beds when booking.

It’s only a short hike to the center of town where, across from a small white stucco casino, Xavier Thély runs the Amphitryon restaurant. Try the surprisingly delicate foie gras/lentil appetizer and don’t miss the strawberry tart with pistachio cream and a bright hint of lime.

Hôtel La Charpinière, 8 allée de la Charpinière, 42330 Saint-Galmier. Tel: 04 77 52 75 00.

L’Amphitryon, 9 blvd Gabriel Cousin, 42330 Saint-Galmier. Tel: 04 77 56 33 39. Closed Sunday and Monday.

See the official tourist site of Loire for further information about this region.

© Corinne LaBalme, 2018.

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Little to no planning is required other than knowing where to rent bicycles if you don’t have one of your own. Trains in most directions are frequent enough that you don’t even have to worry much about timing your departure (unless there’s a strike). Many trains outside of rush hour (you’ll be going in the opposite direction) accept bicycles in a special compartment.

The biking route

The heart of this daytrip is a 9-10-mile ride in each direction through the Forest of Compiegne between the palace of Compiègne and the castle of Pierrefonds. These two notable sights are connected by two major routes through the National Forest of Compiegne, with many possible detours.

The forest covers about 35,000 acres, much of it former royal hunting ground. The landscape is fairly flat with a few minimal rises. Most of the paths you’ll ride on are paved. The forest is thick with oak and beech, and perhaps you’ll glimpse a deer or a boar or a roe. Roe are small European deer, like the original Bambi (created by an Austrian), which Disney transformed into a North American mule deer.

Of the major biking routes, the southern route through the forest allows for a stop in the village of Saint Jean aux Bois, with its abbey church and picturesque houses, while the northern route goes by the village of Moulins, with its church. I recommend starting with the southern route then taking the northern route on the return since that would then allow you to make a last-minute decision to make a 3-mile detour to the Glade of the Armistice, time and biking energy permitting. The glade is a clearing on the northern edge of the forest where the armistice ending combat of the First World War was signed. Add to this a mile’s ride from the Compiègne train station to/from the edge of the forest and you get a cycling day of 20-25 miles, depending on your route. It’s therefore a moderate ride, and for those with athletic teens a family-friendly daytrip.

How much time you spend visiting the three major sights on this route, or simply admiring them from the outside, is up to you.

This biking map can be downloaded. Your point of departure, the Compiègne train station (Gare SNCF), is at the upper left of that map.

Here’s a wider view of the region:

The train from Paris

The train between Paris’s North Station (Gare du Nord) and Compiegne takes 48 to 75 minutes, with departures every hour or so. Tickets are about 31€ round-trip. They can be purchased online, at any train (not metro or RER) station or at the North Station at the last minute. I can’t guarantee that they’ll be available at the last minute, but these trains tend not to fill outside of rush hour (you’ll be going in the opposite direction) and special events in Compiegne, unless a conductors’ strike causes everyone to pile onto the one running train. The schedule for specific days can be searched on the site of the French railways company SNCF. Trains idled due to strike are generally indicated as such a day in advance.

If you’ve rented a bike in Paris or have your own, then you’ll need to know which trains have a bike compartment. In that case, look for the appropriate indication in the pull-down tab describing each departure.

As you arrive at the track, you’ll see a bicycle symbol on the appropriate wagon, but don’t hesitate to ask if you don’t see it. Communication tip for those who don’t speak French: Find a train official on the track, say “Bonjour, excusez-moi,” point to your bicycle then to the train. A shrug of the shoulders and the monkey-like sound où, meaning where, ought to get you pointed to the right compartment.

Bike rental in Compiegne

It’s easy to rent bikes in Compiegne through the rental company Picardie Forêts Vertes, operated by Vincent, with whom you can write to or speak with in English. The booking process and other details are explained in English on the website. Vincent encourages people to reserve their bikes 48 hours or more in advance, but he can often accommodate requests made less than 24 hours in advance, particularly on weekdays. You’ll also make arrangements to drop off the bikes at the end of the day.

A VTC or VTT can be rented for 20€ per day, an electric bike for 25€. Tandems, baby seats and trailers for small children are also available. Helmets, locks and maps are provided. Bring an ID as a deposit. Though the typical rental season runs April through October, you may also contact Vincent in advance about rentals during the off-season.

Compiegne also has an inexpensive bike-share system called Vélotic, with a bike station at the train station. Rentals are 2€ for two days.

Lunch options

I’m not much of a planner when it comes to a short ride involving two towns, as with this ride. You can always find a bakery and cafés in Compiegne and Pierrefords, wherever hunger strikes. My own preference is to purchase a sandwich or more from a bakery in Pierrefonds or have lunch in a café there. If you’re more of a planner you can bring a picnic from Paris or purchase picnic goodies at the center of Compiegne. Or if you set out late in the morning from Paris you enjoy a café or restaurant lunch in Compiegne before setting off through the forest for the afternoon. The Palace of Compiegne also has a nice tea room. Bring along water for the ride in any case. On your return to the heart of Compiegne at the end of the day you might stop into a bakery and chocolate shop to reward yourself for a ride well done.

Sightseeing and touring

There are three notable sights to see along this route: the Palace of Compiegne, the Castle of Pierrefonds and the Glade of the Armistice. You’ll have a fine biking day without going inside any of these, but each is worthwhile and informative should you decide to enter.

The palace is closed Tuesdays and the castle is open daily. Both are closed Jan. 1, May 1 and Dec. 25. The glade is open daily but if making this your final stop note that last admission is at 5:30PM for a 6PM closing. They’re all open daily, except for some holidays. See their respective websites for more schedule details.

As a town with a major palace, Compiègne itself makes for a pleasing daytrip from Paris even if you aren’t interested in biking. So if there are any non-bikers in your travel group they can train out to Compiegne with you and pleasantly live their own touring lives as the others go out biking. The center of town is a 10-minute walk on the opposite side of the Oise River from the train station.

Crossing the bridge you might notice to the right the ruins of a tower now (sometimes) called the Joan of Arc Tour since it existed at the time of Joan’s downfall. On May 23, 1430, having come to help defend the Compiegne from attack by the Bungundians, she was captured and eventually sold to the English and taken to Rouen, where she was tried, condemned and burnt at the stakes. That history—and the late 19th-century inclination to honor it—explains the statue of Joan on the town’s central square in front of City Hall. A local Joan of Arc festival is held the second to last weekend in May.

More eye-catching than the statue is the flamboyant façade of Town Hall, built at the turn of the 16th century. It is one of France’s most remarkable town halls for the way it represents the transition between Gothic and Renaissance architecture in the kingdom. Louis XII, who reigned 1498-1515, rides at the center. (The Loire Valley cyclist might recognize him from the entrance to the Castle of Blois.) Town Hall’s Bancloque, an ancient bell first installed in 1303, still manages a dull thud and dong. The Compiegne Tourist Office is here. If you don’t yet have a map of cycling routes for this daytrip you can pick one up here, along with a town map and other information.

As far as tourism goes, though, the palace is the town’s main attraction.

The Palace of Compiegne

Successive royal castles existed here since the 5th century, beginning with the earliest dynasty of rulers, the Frankish Merovingian kings. What’s seen today is a royal and imperial palace that began with a complete redesign and rebuilding in the latter half of the 18th century by Louis XV’s chief architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel. Gabriel’s other major works include the Petit Trianon and the Opera at Versailles, Place de la Concorde and adjacent Hôtels de Crillon and de la Marine in Paris, and Place de la Bourse in Bordeaux.

The Palace of Compiegne as it stands today is a major monument to the architectural style of the latter part of Louis XV’s reign (1715-1774) and to decorative styles over the 100 years that followed.

On our last biking excursion we didn’t go inside but we did stop to watch a parade by the palace.

Here, in 1770, Louis XV’s grandson and heir to the throne, the 16-year-old future Louis XVI, was first introduced to his fiancé Marie-Antoinette of Austria. It wasn’t the kings Louis who got the most use from the palace, however (they continued to primarily hold court at Versailles), rather the emperors Napoleon. In 1810, Napoleon I met his second wife, Marie-Antoinette’s niece Marie-Louise, at Compiègne, but the first Napoleon generally preferred Fontainebleau.

Compiègne is primarily associated with lengthy stays by Napoleon III, who reigned 1852-1870, and his imperial court. When not reigning from the Tuileries Palace in Paris, this was his Versailles, where he would gather the Court for a month or more during the autumn hunting season in the forest that you’ll soon be biking through.

If the weather turns sour while in Compiegne, you can always forgo biking and spend the afternoon visiting the palace and the town.

Warning: If you do lock up your bikes outside and decide to take a quick tour of the palace, you may soon fall under its charms and find yourself drawn into spending a few hours here: visiting palace rooms that give an excellent lesson in the decorative styles associated with the eras of Louis XV and XVI and Napoleon I and III; strolling in the park; lounging in the tearoom; visiting a museum dedicated to the Second Empire (Napoleon III) and then a large collection of horse-drawn carriages and vehicles from the 17th to the 20th centuries, including early motorized vehicles and bicycles. A biking daytrip can soon turn into an excursion to the Palace of Compiegne.

Entrance to the park is free if you’d just like to lock your bikes up outside to enjoy an impressive view the palace from that side. But if the weather holds and you still think of this as a biking excursion, either limit your time in the palace or save your Compiegne-only daytrip for another day. Then cycle on past the palace, down Avenue Royale, with stately mansions to your right and a horseracing track coming up on your left.

The Castle of Pierrefonds

At a leisurely pace with a village stop along the way you’ll arrive in Pierrefonds an hour or two later. Or you could get lost, as a friend and I did on a distracted trek through the woods, and nonchalantly arrive three hours later.

As with the Palace of Compiegne, you can lock up your bikes to go inside the Castle of Pierrefonds, or not. Since there’s less to see inside, the interior can be visited in less than an hour. From Jan 11-Sept. 16, 2018 there’s an exhibition of castle graffiti, particularly during the First World War, when the castle was requisitions to house French soldiers.

Here’s a drone view of the castle:

The feudal castle of the late 14th century was mostly dismantled in the 17th, leaving ruins to be admired by the likes of Victor Hugo and others who enjoyed exercising their imaginations of medieval time. Among them was the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, the man behind many of the state-sponsored restorations of the reign of Napoleon III. The emperor’s affection for Compiegne and for hunts in the forest would have led him along some of the same paths that just brought you to Pierrefonds. He commissioned Viollet-le-Duc to rebuild the castle, and the architect was pleased to have such an open hand in creating an idealized fortified castle, drawbridge (currently under restoration) and all. While not authentically medieval, it is nevertheless an imposing sight standing on a hill above this quaint little town of about 1860 Pétrifontains, as its inhabitants are called.

Whether entering the castle or not, this daytrip calls for a relaxing pause in a café by the town square below it or by the lake.

The Glade of the Armistice

A stop at the Glade of the Armistice (Clairière de l’Armistice) adds just three miles to the ride back to the Compiegne train station. Be sure to have a detailed map of the forest so as to not miss the point at which you’ll break off from the main Pierrefonds-Compiegne biking route to head to the Clarière.

In addition to the three extra miles, count on 30 to 60 minutes to visit this reminder of the armistice ending combat of the First World War and of the French surrender ending the Battle of France in the initial phases of the Second World War.

A dining car put into service in 1914, shortly before the start of the war, was placed at the disposal of French Marshal Ferdinand Foch, Supreme Allied Commander in 1918, and brought on November 8 of that year to the Rethondes railway junction in a secluded clearing on the edge of the forest. It was here that Foch and British First Lord of the Admirality Rosslyn Wemyss, together representing the victorious Allies, met with Matthias Erzberger, who led the German delegation, for the purpose of agreeing to an signing an armistice to end combat after more than four years of war. The signing took place three days after the parties first met, with the armistice set to take effect “at 11 o’clock, on the 11th day, of the 11th month.”

The original railway car was presented in the courtyard of the Invalides in Paris from 1922 to 1927 before being placed back in the glade in the forest.

It was in this same clearing in that same car that Adolf Hitler delighted in having France surrendered to Germany on June 22, 1940. The car was then taken to Germany to be proudly displayed in Berlin. It was moved again later in the war to protect it from aerial bombing, but nevertheless went up in flames in 1945. Whether the fire was due to a bombing raid or by intentional German destruction is debated. The museum here itself states that the fire was “accidental.” A replica of the wagon as it was on November 11, 1918, now stands in the clearing, along some original monuments from the 1920s, including a statue of Marshal Foch. A small museum recounts these events through photographs and artefacts.

The last train to Paris

The last train to Paris from Compiegne generally departs at about 8:30PM.

© 2018, Gary Lee Kraut

For further information see the following websites:
Picardie Forêts Vertes (Compiegne bike rental company), Vélotic (Compiegne bike share), Forest of Compiegne biking map, Compiegne Tourist Office, Palace of Compiegne, Castle of Pierrefonds, Glade of the Armistice, SNCF train schedule and reservations. Compiegne and Pierrefonds are within the department (sub-region) of Oise.

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* * *

Summer now brightens the Loire Valley. The limestone chateaux sparkle in ochre and gold. Chambord stands out in a clearing in the forest as an enormous and intricate block of limestone encrusted with slate in its crown. Cheverny appears bleached in the midday sun. In summer’s light Chenonceau seems to prance more lightly than ever over the Cher River. Azay-le-Rideau now enjoys its days in the sun after several years of restoration. The slate bands of Angers glisten grey.

But there’s more to these chateaux than elegant masonry. This year, while continuing to honor its royal and noble stonework, the Loire Valley is celebrating its gardens and their history. Whether you think of it as the Loire Valley, Val de Loire, the Valley of the Kings or “that region with all the castles,” the valley, with its confluents, is now in full bloom.

The history of the chateaux of the Loire Valley is intimately linked with the history of France of the 15th and 16th century. During that period the kings, along with their financiers and entourage, frequently sojourned in the valley. That period corresponds to an evolution of the architecture of the dwellings of the rich and powerful. The high crenelated walls, blind except for their arrow slits, of the defensive castle lost their utility in the 15th century; canons and other arms meant that defenses had to be further out. Castle architects could therefore drop their defenses, so to speak, giving way to more open, ornamental configurations in the form of luxuriant castles and palaces. At the same time, the castle garden evolved from plots for fruit trees, vegetables and herbs to the geometric embroidery of what came to be known as the French garden.

Even though the Bourbon kings in the 17th century returned their focus to Paris (the Louvre, the Tuileries) and the capital region (Fontainebleau, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, finally Versailles), the chateaux of the Loire Valley were not forgotten. And their surroundings gardens often expanded along with the scope and fashion of the French garden. By the 18th century the arrival of exotic plants from the New World at the port of Nantes, at the far end of the valley, further enriched noble gardens with vegetation, trees and medicinal plants.

The history of French gardens is therefore intimately related to that of its chateaux, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the Loire Valley.

UNESCO World Heritage Site

The Loire flows north from low in the center of France before veering west to the Atlantic. When we speak of Val de Loire, the Loire Valley, we refer to the 180-mile stretch of that western flow, from Sully-sur-Loire (southeast of Orleans) to Nantes, including its surrounding confluents and rivers: the Cher, the Indre, the Maine, the Loir.

UNESCO has designated the banks of the Loire from Sully-sur-Loire to Chalonnnes-sur-Loire (just short of Nantes) as a World Heritage Site, calling it “an outstanding cultural landscape of great beauty, containing historic towns and villages, great architectural monuments (the châteaux), and cultivated lands formed by many centuries of interaction between their population and the physical environment, primarily the river Loire itself.”

This year the Loire Valley Mission has placed the region’s gardens as the centerpiece of the cultural season. From château to château—some we may think of as castles, some as palaces—gardens and garden exhibitions throughout the valley invite travelers to take a stroll through the evolution of French gardens: from the closed medieval garden square to the fountains and grottos of the Italian-cum-French gardens of the French Renaissance to the vast aristocratic and royal gardens developed around a central axis, and in some cases to English gardens of the 19th century.

Villandry

The Year of Gardens in the Loire Valley was launched this spring at the valley’s the most famous gardens, those of Villandry.

Henri Carvallo, Villandry’s owner, is the great-grandson Joachim Carvallo, a Spanish doctor, and Ann Coleman, an American heiress to the Coleman iron and steel business, who purchased the property in 1906. They (re)created the Renaissance garden based in part on vegetal archeology, eliminating in the process a 19th-century English garden created by their predecessors. At its origin (during the Renaissance and for the Carvallos) the kitchen garden was created for both decorative and botanical purposes. The Carvallos added terraces, symbolic ornamental hedge gardens, a labyrinth and a water basin.

Joachim Carvallo founded La Demeure Historique, an association of private owners of historical homes and gardens, which remains an important player in the field of heritage sites in France.

Having grown up with a vegetal game board for a backyard, it’s no surprise that his great-grandson Henri Carvallo would become adept at the game of chess. He is a former president of the French Chess Federation and chess tournaments are occasionally held at Villandry.

Ten gardeners work full time at Villandry, with Laurent Portuguez at the helm. Portuguez was hired 10 years ago to head the project for the construction of a new garden, “the sun garden” (2008), and was soon named head gardener for the property. The Carvallo family now lives in what used to be the estate’s farm building, the basse-cour, as does Portuguez.

Villandry’s gardens, open yearround, draw about 350,000 visitors per year. During the time of the stewardship of Henri Carvallo’s parents about 20 percent of visitors would pay the extra francs to enter the chateau. Now about 50 percent pay the extra euros to do so. There are several charming rooms to furnish visitors’ noble fantasies and a Maureque room as a reminder that the expanding world view of the Renaissance bought with it a taste for exoticism. The main attraction to entering the castle, however, is the view from the top of the tower overlooking the gardens.

Other major gardens

Gardens throughout the valley and along its confluents have been replanted, modified, restored or created over the past century, as one would expect from plots originally landscaped hundreds of years ago. Some have disappeared completely, for example Blois, where the city has grown over the garden.

Among the most notable visible today are:

Chambord. Chambord is a national domain where Francis I’s 16th-century castle is bordered by a reconstitution of a garden envision by Louis XIV in the 17th-century gardens and designed in the 18th century. The garden was inaugurated by President Hollande early this year.

Chenonceau. Perhaps due to its soap-opera quality, the historical anecdote that all visitors seem to know when arriving in the valley is this: After the death of her husband King Henri II, who’d been mortally wounded in a jousting tournament in Paris in 1559, Catherine de Medicis forced an exchange of castles upon the late king’s mistress Diane de Poitiers. The queen swapped her emotionless Chaumont overlooking the Loire for Diane’s more modernly elegant Chenonceau stepping across the Cher. Chenonceau’s role in that famous catfight has probably contributed to it being the most-visited privately owned chateau in France, though it is indeed a feast for the eye and the owners, the Meniers (chocolate magnate Henri Menier purchased Chenonceau in 1913), have developed a spectacular setting into a thriving business. The chateau is preceded by a gardens initiated by Diane to one side and by Catherine to the other. A separate garden provides the profusion of flowers seen inside the chateau. There’s also a labyrinth on the property, some donkeys and an English garden that will be inaugurated this fall.

Chaumont-sur-Loire. Meanwhile, back at the Loire, Chaumont is no longer the mammoth that Catherine was quick to swap. Today it would today be well worth an exchange. Overlooking the river between Blois and Amboise, this vast domain belonging to the region Centre-Val de Loire doesn’t need the Year of Gardens to call attention to itself as a destination for garden-lovers. Each year since 1992 an international assortment of landscape gardeners has been selected to create new gardens on a portion of the estate. This year’s theme is Flower Power. Altogether the gardens form a renewable space of innovation, creativity and pleasure for the senses.

Angers. Angers Castle is an impassive fortification on the Maine River. Though one doesn’t typically think of visiting the fortified castle of Angers for anything but a view of its imposing walls and the spectacle of the Tapestry of the Apocalypse inside, snippets of garden and horticulture plots along the top of the walls offer a panorama of the vegetal vocabulary of the French Renaissance. In 2017 Angers and Nantes were ranked as having best policies regarding green urban spaces and preserving diversity, according to the Observatoire des Villes Vertes, an organization that brings together directors of green spaces in cities throughout France. The OVV noted Tours, a central city in the Loire Valley, as the city with the most green space accessible to the public.

Azay-le-Rideau. Sitting on an island in the Indre River, Azay has finally been released from the scaffolding that for three years prohibited an open view of its 16th-century grace. Here it isn’t so much the variety of trees or the English garden that adds to the overall architecture of the setting as the surrounding water in which the castle is mirrored.

Other gardens

The diverse range of chateau gardens and other significant gardens in the Loire Valley that are in the spotlight this year are presented on the website Jardins en Val de Loire. Summer travelers looking to visit gardens beyond the blockbusters noted above will find ample suggestions there for further garden explorations and more breathing space. A program of events is also found on the site.

Don’t worry though if you can’t make it to the Loire Valley this year. The gardens and their history will still be here in the years to come.

© 2017, Gary Lee Kraut

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