On a far more intimate scale, the Clos Lucé in Amboise, a charming brick chateau in the Loire Valley, also made the cut. Though called a chateau, the Clos Lucé more resembles a large manor, and its magic is less about royal high-rollers than the Italian commoner who resided on the grounds for three short years: Leonardo da Vinci.

With three paintings in his luggage—Mona Lisa, St. Anne and John the Baptist—Leonardo da Vinci made the long and arduous journey across the Alps to Amboise via mule-train and riverboat in 1516 at the well-paid request of King François I, his last noble patron.

While Leonardo’s French dwelling has been open to the public since the 1950s, its displays have changed and expanded over the decades, and a free-standing, immersive gallery inaugurated on the grounds in June 2021 now makes the Clos Lucé an even more enticing place the understand the genius of Leonardo (Léonard in French). It includes 21st-century high-tech gizmos that the Renaissance man himself would undoubtedly have appreciated.

The Clos Lucé is a 10-minute walk from the sprawling clifftop Château d’Amboise, that has dominated the town and the Loire River for over 800 years, where eventual King François (Francis) I grew up. Shortly after his coronation in 1515, France embarked on string of military victories on the Italian peninsula, the latest in a series of incursions there. Though they failed to secure for France the control and influence that it long sought in Italy, they did lead the king to appreciate Italian culture and to a meeting with the great Renaissance man himself. An art lover and an artist groupie, François I installed his famous Florentine guest near Amboise Castle in what was then known as the Manoir du Cloux, a 15th century turreted pink brick mansion that would later come to be called the Château du Clos Lucé. An underground passage, since filled in, linked the two properties for private king-to-genius visits.

The Cloux-cum-Clos is also associated with an earlier relationship between a royal and a commoner, that of Louis XI and a kitchen boy named Etienne Le Loup. Legend holds that one fine day in 1471 the king ventured into the royal pantry and asked the teen how much he was paid. Etienne replied “as much as the king,” leading Louis to inquire how much he thought the king earned. “As much as he needs, just like me.” The king was so charmed by this response that he gave the kid a title and the Clos Lucé holding. Etienne then expanded the manor on the site, making it much the way it appears today from the outside. Whatever the true reason for the king’s generosity, Etienne, in 1490, sold the property back to the crown, then on the head of Louis’s successor, who transformed portions of the interior (a royal chapel was added). The stage was soon sent for the property to serve as the royal guest house for da Vinci.

A Da Vinci Theme Park

Since 1855, the Clos Lucé estate has been owned by the Saint Bris family. While his parents opened the grounds to the public in 1954, it’s the current landlord, François Saint Bris, who has sprinkled the pixie dust of Leonardo’s genius throughout the property.

“Genius” is notoriously difficult to convey to a large audience. But Leonardo’s brilliance as an artist, architect, inventor, engineer and urbanist is demonstrated by actual things that can be seen, touched or used: Mona Lisa in the Louvre, the Escher-esque spiral staircase that’s primarily attributed to him at Chambord, and here at the Clos Lucé many models and visionary images to amaze and delight visitors of all ages: swiveling bridges, helicopters, automobiles, bat-winged gliders, ideal cities, urban sewage systems, theatrical spectacles and, alas, armored tanks and machine guns.

Growing up on the property, François Saint Bris wasn’t immediately drawn in by the da Vinci mystique. As a child, he says, adult discussions of “le grand Léonard” sounded like “le grand renard” (the giant fox), which was more interesting to him than “a guy called Leonard.” Clearly, he has come around as he has increasingly turned the Clos Lucé into a da Vinci theme park, with further projects on the drawing board.

The new Leonardo da Vinci Galleries form an immersive playground that recreates—though some sleight-of-hand tech from IBM, Dassault Aeronautics and the numeric architecture firm Arc-en-Scène—da Vinci’s most fantastic accomplishments. Geared to delight both children and adults, the new invention and architecture spaces, housed in a freshly renovated 19th-century factory on the property, expand on the already extensive simulations that visitors could see at the main abode of the Clos Lucé. They’re filled with 3-D models and videos, including games that simulate Leonardo’s gliders flying over the Loire, while his art is honored in a virtual and musical montage with 200 images dissolving and evolving across the walls.

And it doesn’t stop there. The extensive gardens, echoing the flowers and foliage depicted in Leonardo’s paintings, are punctuated by scale models of the inventor’s innovative bridges and computer-generated images. In the chateau/manor itself, visitors can see a reconstitution of Leonardo’s bedroom, a reconstruction of his studio, the oratory frescoes that Charles VIII commissioned for his wife Anne de Bretagne, and a life-size, walking-talking hologram of Leonardo chatting about art with the Cardinal of Aragon.

Amboise Castle and Da Vinci DNA

No “Homage to Leonardo” tour would be complete without a visit to the Château d’Amboise, in whichever order you choose to visit them. While the castle housed over a dozen kings and a plethora of dukes over the ages, it also held unwilling guests. D’Artagnan escorted the flashy financier Nicolas Fouquet of Vaux-le-Vicomte fame, to the grounds after Louis XIV accused him of embezzlement and before he was sent to a more distant and damning prison. The Emir Abd El Kader (1808-1883), leader of the Algerian resistance, was a prisoner of state at Amboise, along with his family and an entourage of 83, from 1848 until liberated by Louis Napoléon Bonaparte in 1852. There’s a statue to his memory in the castle’s park.

Inside the castle, one can see a sentimental yet historically inaccurate vision of Leonardo’s death in the arms of François I that was painted by François-Guillaume Ménageot in 1781. While the two men were indeed on very friendly terms, the king was in Saint-Germain-en-Laye when Leonardo died at the Clos Lucé.

There’s greater mystery connected with Leonardo’s final resting place. On his deathbed, the artist asked to be buried in the royal chapel in the gardens of Amboise castle, and this request was granted. However, that chapel was destroyed during the Revolution—a statue of Leonardo in the garden marks the chapel’s former location—but at the time no one was overly concerned with the graves on the site.

Leonardo’s lily-bedecked tomb was moved to another chapel at the castle site, Chapelle de Saint Hubert, a small, freestanding Flamboyant Gothic edifice, decorated with antlers because Hubert is the patron saint of hunters.

But is Leonardo da Vinci really buried there?

It wasn’t until 1863, when historian Arsène Houssaye started poking through the debris, that a coffin and some coins minted during François I’s reign were discovered and nearby remains were designated as da Vinci’s.

This has engendered countless, Dan Brownish discussions over the years along on the lines of “was the body now entombed in the current Amboise grave left-handed like Leonardo?” Advances in DNA research—and the da Vincimania that accompanied the 500-year commemorations of his death in 2019 (when the Clos Lucé drew a record 520,000 visitors)—sparked an international fire-storm of interest in the genetic heritage of the remains in the tomb.

Leonardo’s DNA has proved elusive. He apparently had no direct offspring yet his extremely prolific father, a Florentine notary, spawned double-digit half-siblings for the artist.  Samples from the remains in the Amboise vault have been sent to several DNA labs, but there’s been no definitive answer as yet. For the moment, Leonardo’s chromosomes are still as enigmatic as Mona Lisa’s smile.

Practical information

Though more likely visited during extended explorations in the Loire Valley, Amboise can be the object of a carefully-timed day trip from Paris. Trains from Paris’s Austerlitz and Montparnasse stations take between an hour and a half and two hours. The Clos Lucé and the Château d’Amboise are just over a mile from the train station. A shuttle bus links the train station with the center of town.

Parking for cars and bicycles is also available in proximity of those sights. There are three public parking lots in Amboise within walking distance of the chateau, along with a designated Clos Lucé lot.

There are two restaurants on the Clos Lucé grounds: La Terrasse Renaissance (salads and crepes) and La Table du Moulin (grilled meat, salads and take-away sandwiches), to be enjoyed on shaded picnic tables. A third restaurant, L’Auberge du Prieuré, specializing in Renaissance-style fare and wines spiked with herbs and honey, is open for groups of 15 or more, reservations required. Picnics are also permitted on the grounds of the Château d’Amboise, which has an on-site café. There are also many cafés and eateries in the stroll-worthy town Amboise, though the primary points of interest are the castle and the Clos Lucé.

Château du Clos-Lucé – Parc Leonardo da Vinci, 2 rue du Clos Lucé, Amboise. Closed December 25 and January 1.

Château d’Amboise/Amboise Castle, Montée de l’Emir Abd El Kader, Amboise. Closed December 25 and January 1.

© 2022, Corinne LaBalme

The post The Clos Lucé Enhances Its Connection with Da Vinci in Amboise (Loire Valley) appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

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Sitting on a cliff overlooking the Loire River, the castle of Chaumont has great appeal year-round for a drive-by photoshoot. But the true fairy tale is in the backyard from April 1 to November 2 when the annual International Garden Festival, now in its 25th year, makes the castle, its stable and surrounding 79 acres ready for an enchanting variety of close-ups.

This is not your great-grandmother’s garden party. Every year the festival invites creative folk from other fields (e.g. Baroque music conductor Willliam Christie, architect Shiguru Ban, Michelin-starred chef Alain Passard, choreographer Benjamin Millepied) to get their hands dirty in the vast domain of Chaumont, where they’re joined by landscape gardeners and architects and botanical-minded individuals more accustomed to playing in the mud. Young garden creators selected in an annual competition for garden projects round out a truly international festival that displays great diversity in conception and execution.

The results are often playful, thought-provoking and unusual, and the current offbeat crop created around the theme “Gardens from the Coming Century” is no exception.

Among this year’s headliners is the decadently hedonistic “Perfumer’s Garden” created by Hermès “nose” Jean-Claude Ellena, who thoughtfully includes a circle of low-rise lounge chairs. (Message: There’s no excuse not to smell the roses and get up-close-and-personal with the roots.)

“Explosive Nature,” designed by landscape architects Marguerite Ribstein and Grégory Cazeaux, is guerilla gardening at its best, created by “seed grenades” lobbed at random towards a wooden bridge structure. It’s a Darwinian Battle of the Buds based on ancient Japanese terra-forming techniques and one of the most classically harmonious gardens of the year.

There’s so much growing at Chaumont that a map—and at least half a day—is necessary. Besides this year’s offbeat ephemeral gardens, there are plenty of old-fashioned art-for-art’s-sake flower gardens, a magnificent variety of long-rooted trees and an ambitious indoor/outdoor art show drawing big-name, blockbuster talents like Andy Goldsworthy, El Anatsui and Marc Couturier.

Unlike the gardens, the castle itself, while old enough to have a working drawbridge and to have been a pawn in the 16th-century Catherine de Medicis/Diane de Poitiers Chaumont-for-Chenonceau real estate swap, is definitely your great-grandmother’s castle… if she were a party-loving 19th-century heiress, that is.

In 1875 17-year-old sugar heiress (and Kim Kardashian prototype) Marie-Charlotte-Constance Say bought what was then a rundown castle. With her husband, Prince Amédée de Broglie, she turned the castle and its domain into France’s premier party venue. The French A-List drank the Princess’s bubbly and an Indian Maharajah sent an elephant as a bread-and-butter gift.

There are lots of elephant photos in the regionally-owned castle (75% self-supporting) since the curators have been banking on emphasizing the site’s colorful 19th century history (less expensive to procure) when refurbishing the castle. While there are some “old” rooms, like the quirky salon dedicated to Catherine’s astrologer, it’s never the “ordinary” Renaissance chateau. The rooms are filled with artworks by the contemporary likes of Sarkis and Gabriel Ozozco.

Don’t miss the stables. Not only is this equine manor house architecturally splendid and vintage harness and saddlery equipment (lots of Hermes here), but that’s where two of this year’s highlight instillations are on view: a fanciful vegetal sculpture signed Patrick Blanc and a gloriously, green marble evocation of the Seine created by Mathieu Lehanneur. The latter was voted by DeZeen Magazine as one of the eight “must see” installations worldwide in the summer of 2016.

Those wishing to explore far and wide on the castle grounds might also go hunting for the princess’s dog cemetery on the edge of the woods.

Practical information: Visiting the castle, the stables, the garden festival at a leisurely pace will take at least several hours. There are decent lunch possibilities on site: a snack bar, a pasta bar and an actual restaurant. Entrance to the castle, the stables and the garden festival costs 14€, 6€ for children 6-11 years old and it’s free for younger children. Two-day passes are available for the passionate gardener. See Chaumont’s website for further details.

Getting there: Chaumont is between Blois and Tour, 165 miles southwest of Paris, about a 2½-hour drive. Trains to Onzain/Chaumont-sur-Loire leaving from Paris’s Gare d’Austerlitz take roughly 2 hours depending on the route; the entrance then a 10-minute walk from the station. Trains operate year-round but most frequently in July and August.

Lodging nearby: There’s the attractive little 3-star Hostellerie du Château (pool, restaurant) in the village so in walking distance, and the luxurious 4-star Domaine des Hauts de Loire (Relais & Chateau) in nearby Onzain.

Preparing for 2017: The competition is already underway for entries to take part in next year’s festival under the theme “Flower Power.”

© 2016 Corinne LaBalme

The post Chaumont Playfully Imagines Gardens of the Future appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Even before you travel you can benefit from some GLK Travel Therapy to get you over the humps of planning your travels in France.

When you’re suffering from a case of Paris-envy, Francophilia, Normandy-mania other regional-minded afflictions, a session or two of GLK Travel Therapy by phone will help lay the groundwork for a worry-free trip. GLK Travel Therapy is also the perfect tailor-made travel gift for your traveling loved-ones.

How do you know if you need GLK Travel Therapy?

Some of the symptoms to watch for:
– You’re restless.
– Your minds wanders frequently to thoughts of Paris and elsewhere in France.
– You’ve been spending hours searching for travel ideas about France rather than doing something useful such as improving your French vocabulary.
– You believe that you have to visit Paris exactly the same way that a friend of yours from work did years ago even though you have nothing in common.
– You dream of food (cuisine, you’d call it)
– You imagine yourself surrounded by great monuments, wandering through unknown neighborhoods, pressing your nose against pastry-shop windows.
– You imagine setting down not to food but to cuisine.
– You see yourself as “belonging” in the heart of café culture.
– You’d rather plan a rendez-vous than any ordinary get-together.
– You panic at having choose between Normandy, the Loire Valley, Provence, the Riviera and all those other places you’ve read about on France Revisited.
– You speak of burgundy as though it were more than just a color.
– You say “baguette,” “boutique,” “macaron” and “champagne” as though no English words for them exist.
– You frequently long to be wished “bon voyage” and to wish others “bon appétit.”

If you or loved one has two or more of these symptoms then you/he/she may have a case of case of Paris-envy, Francophilia, Normandy-mania other regional-minded afflictions that could benefit from GLK Travel Therapy.

The best self-help a traveler can get

A session or two of travel therapy with moi, Gary, Paris’s premier travel therapist (and the editor of your trusty and uncommon web magazine France Revisited).

Your therapy session(s) will take place by phone when I call you from Paris (or wherever I may be) whenever you feel a bout of Paris-envy or Francophilia coming on. That typically occurs in the weeks or months before you travel abroad but could be a matter of days.

As a professional, I’ll help you turn the dreams of your visit to Paris and/or your travels in France into an exciting and delicious reality by providing the advice and the self-help tips that will enable you to:
– plan your itinerary,
– choose the lodging and the restaurants that are right for you,
– understand the logistics of your upcoming trip, and
– make the most of your vacation time.

I’ll further provide you with personalized tour ideas, child-friendly travel advice and other discreet remedies not found on WebMD.

A 50-minute phone session

As a France specialists, I recommend starting your travel therapy before entering the hellish spiral of spending countless hours searching online for tours, hotels, restaurants and itineraries and before letting your friend who once spent three days in Paris five years ago tell you exactly how you should live your dream of travel abroad.

Treat yourself (or your friends or loved ones) to a 50-minute session of travel therapy with Gary for only 65 euros.

If you or they have got a severe case of Paris-envy, Francophilia or multi-region-fantasies, consider purchasing two sessions for 120 euros.

And for that special someone on your holiday list, humor their Paris fantasies by offering them one of the unique and personalized tours listed here.

Get informed and you’ll suffer no longer from indecision

So don’t just sit back and suffer (or let your loved ones suffer) from Francophilia or Paris-envy or Normandy-mania and other regional-minded afflictions. Get on track to the trip that’s right you with a session or more of GLK Travel Therapy with me by phone, or in person. Yes, you or they can have travel therapy in Paris over café or wine.

Write to me personally at gary [at] francerevisited.com to arrange a session of travel therapy or to purchase a travel therapy gift certificate for your friends who may be suffering from Paris-envy.

Be kind to yourself, get travel therapy with a professional Paris-based travel specialist.

Gary

Gary Lee Kraut
Editor, journalist, travel therapist
gary [at] francerevisited.com

The post Professional Travel Therapy for You, Your Friends and Your Loved Ones appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

This little Loire loop—three days, two nights, including two days of biking—is of the latter kind. Beginning and ending in Blois, itself easily reached by train from Paris in 1½-2 hours, this itinerary provides an excellent introduction to the Loire Valley, its castles, its wines and its biking routes. All that with little preparation. Your most difficult decision may well be what to pack in order to keep your biking load light.

Chaumont, Cheverny and Chambord, the three chateaux on this route, are different enough that castle-fatigue won’t set in. The distances covered, about 30 miles per day for each of the two cycling days, is moderate enough to appeal to occasional cyclists while significant enough to attract frequent cyclists who might add a few zigzagging miles to make for a more challenging ride.

While the route is flat, with only a few slight slopes, the distances are great enough that they may be a bit much for children and for those unaccustomed to athletic activity given that you’ll also be doing a lot of walking while visiting the chateaux and their parks and gardens.

This loop covers just a small part of the 500 miles of cycle trails that are covered by Loire à Vélo (Cycling Loire), the Loire Valley system trails going from the outer edge of Burgundy to the east to the outer edge of Brittany to the west, by way of chateaux, vineyards and the towns and cities of Orléans, Blois, Tours, Saumur, Angers and Nantes.

Here’s a 3-day, 15-step itinerary for little Loire Valley loop that begins with a touring day on foot in Blois, reached by train from Paris.

Day 1. Blois.

1. Pack lightly—whatever you can carry on your back and/or in a saddle pack when biking. Take the morning train to Blois from Paris.

2. The castle, tourist office and center of Blois are a 15-minute walk from the station. The Blois Tourist Office is next to the castle entrance. You can pick up a town map there along with maps and information about the chateaux in the surrounding area covered by this loop.

3. Check into hotel or B&B. (Or, since you’ll have packed lightly, carry your bag with you until you’re ready to check in in the afternoon.)

I stayed at the B&B La Maison de Thomas, a friendly little place in the very center of town. The ground floor of the B&B serves as a wine bar in the evening, one of a several places in town to get familiar with Loire Valley wines, particularly the Cheverny and Cour-Cheverny vineyards you’ll be biking past. For other lodging possibilities as well as dining options see the bottom of the article Blois Castle: The Key to the Loire Valley.

4. Visit Blois Castle (read that same article for an overview of its historical and architectural significance) and, if it’s up your alley, La Maison de la Magie, The House of Magic, across the square from the castle. Don’t miss the dragons that emerge periodically from the window of the House of Magic. A bit of wandering between the castle, the river and the cathedral can complete the afternoon.

5. After tasting two or three wines at La Maison de Thomas, you might enjoy, as I did, the relaxed gastronomy at Christophe Cosme’s Le Rendez-vous des Pêcheurs. (Closed Sun. and Mon.). The Blois article mentioned above also lists other dining options.

6. See the sound-and-light show in the courtyard of the castle beginning at 10pm in April, May and September, 10:30pm in June, July and August. An overview of a day in Blois as outlined above appears in the photolog Great Encounters: Blois.

Day 2. Chaumont and Cheverny.

7. Rent bikes from the friendly folks at Traineurs de Loire, 12, rue Saint-Lubin. It opens at 9:30am. You’ll likely walk by the shop during your wanderings on Day 1 since it’s just below the cathedral. If you’d like to picnic you might pack it in Blois before setting off. Otherwise you would have lunch at Chaumont.

8. Ride to the castle at Chaumont-sur-Loire, 20k (12.4 miles) from Blois.

9. There are two entrances to Chaumont: one on the ride near the river, the other upon on the hill behind the castle property. If you want the challenge of a biking up a hill (and the thrill of wheeling down) then take the back entrance. (I took the challenge.)

Give yourself plenty of time to visit Chaumont: the castle (1465-1510), which Queen Catherine de Medicis purchased in 1550 to use in the famous Chambord-for-Chenonceau housing exchange with her husband’s mistress Diane de Poitiers after King Henri II was no longer alive to protect and spoil the latter; the view of the Loire from the castle terrace; the lush castle grounds; the 5-star stables (still displaying its original saddler by Hermès) created during the tenure of Marie Say, Chaumont’s extravagant owner from 1875 to 1938; the animal cemetery for her beloved dogs and monkeys. From late-April to mid-October, Chaumont hosts the International Garden Festival from late-April to mid-October, with two dozen gardens restored or created each year. For garden lovers the festival alone can seduce a visitor a few hours with a lunch and café pause, so you’ll have to remind yourself that you’ve got biking to do.

10a. If you leave Chaumont while the afternoon is still young you might ride to the Chateau de Beauregard. Beauregard is 18.2k (11.3 miles) from Chaumont. Cheverny is then 8.3k (5.1 miles) from Beauregard.

10b. I spent so much time at Chaumont that I rode on directly to Cheverny, a ride of about 22.9k (14.2 miles), give or take a vineyard. Cheverny is described in this article. In addition to the harmony and elegance of the château and its park, a major draw of Cheverny is its kennel for 100 Anglo-French hunting hounds. Since you’ll be arriving here in the mid to late afternoon, you can watch the hounds, tail in the air, devour mass quantities of raw meat during feeding time. The feeding takes place at 5pm daily (with exceptions) from April 1 to September 14. The remainder of the year the feeding takes place at 3pm on Mon., Wed., Thurs. and Fri. (except holidays). It isn’t that they don’t eat on other days but they’re probably out working during the hunting season.

11. Either before or after entering the chateau grounds, you might taste-test some Cheverny and Cour-Cheverny wines right by the entrance at the Maison des Vins de Cheverny, the official tasting table/wine shop of the association of winegrowers from the two appellations. These are the wines from the vineyards that you’ll be riding through on this 2-day loop.

Cheverny is a young, fruity wine largely using sauvignon and some chardonnay for the whites and pinot noir and gamay for the reds and roses. Cour-Cheverny, far less well known and with more cache because of its more limited production (one-tenth that of Cheverny), is made from grape varietal called Romorantin, a grape now specific to this area, cousin to chardonnay, introduced by king Francoise I, and so proprietary that it’s typically written with a capital R.

The tasting table/wine shop It isn’t a cozy setting but it’s the opportunity to learn something about these wines if you haven’t yet had the time or inclination to visit a vineyard between chateaux. The Maison des Vins de Cheverny is open daily from Easter to the beginning of November, 11am-1:15pm and 2:15-6pm. Since the tasting room may be closing before you finish visiting the chateau grounds at that time, so I suggest stopping here before going in—furthermore, that’ll give you time to digest the alcohol before getting back into the saddle. The chateau itself is open until 6:30pm April-October, until 5pm the rest of the year, though the grounds stay open later.

12. There are two good options for a fine meal and a good night’s sleep: the 3-star Auberge du Centre in Chitenay, 7.4k (4.6 miles) from Cheverny, where I enjoyed a most pleasant evening during this loop, and the 4-star Château du Breuil, on the edge of Cheverny, 4.4k (2.7 miles) from the chateau. Both have restaurants. Breuil also has a swimming pool.

Day 3. Chambord and return to Blois.

13. The ride from either of the hotels noted above to the Chateau de Chambord is just over 21k or 13 miles, making for a leisurely morning ride. Here’s an article about Chambord, the Loire Valley’s XXL castle.

14. There’s plenty to keep you busy at Chambord and extra cycling trails to be taken in the area, so in visiting the area you’ll have to make sure that you leave yourself plenty of time to get your bike back to the rental place in Blois, which closes at 6pm.

The most direct route to Blois through the countryside is 16.4k (10.2 miles), but for the more scenic route you’d head directly to the Loire at Saint-Dyé-sur-Loire then ride downstream to Blois, staying on the left (southern) bank of the river until you cross over the old bridge at Blois. That route adds a few miles, plus there are some great riverside photo ops along the way. And on my own trip I encountered such a strong headwind along the river that the last 7 miles felt like three times that, but it was well worth it for the beauty of the ride.

I therefore suggest allowing yourself a good two hours to make it back to Blois.

15. Once you’ve dropped off the bike give yourself 30 minutes to get to the train station—make that an hour so as to relax in a café near the rental shop before taking the train. Back to Paris? Or further down the river to, say, Saumur, for the start of another little loop in the Loire?

Text and photos © 2015, Gary Lee Kraut

The post A Little Loop in the Loire Valley: A 2-day Cycling Route from Blois appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

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Blois (pronounced a sharp blwa, vampire-like) holds a prominent place on the map, yet its castle is often ignored in favor of more photogenic stars of the valley. Chambord, Chenonceau, Villandry, Azay-le-Rideau, Usée and Saumur, for example, readily lend themselves to adjectives such as majestic, exquisite, idyllic, dramatic, elegant or storybook. (Match the adjectives with the chateaux and you get a free subscription to France Revisited for the rest of this year.)

Blois Castle, le château de Blois, stands on a rise on the right bank of the Loire but it offers no great photo op from the river. The Blois Tourist Office might well sue me for libel for showing this gray-weather shot from the bridge across the river.

And the main entrance to the castle is more promising though still not as imposing or impressive or fairy-tale as we’d like our castles to look, particularly when seen under an indeterminate sky.

But that doesn’t make Blois any less notable. This is in fact the most historically and architecturally significant of the chateaux of the Loire Valley. Admittedly, that isn’t a line you use to get your spouse to choose Blois as a vacation destination or to get your 12-year-old excited about a trip abroad (how about telling him/her that there’s a Magic Museum with dragons in the windows across the square?). Nevertheless, Blois is a key to understanding the valley’s castle-scape.

What it lacks in outward photogenia it makes up for in details, in revealing history and in convenience to daytripper and valley bikers. Blois does have character(s). You just need to get closer to see it/them.

Let’s take a look.

Amboise Castle, a left bank chateau 22 miles downstream, is more photogenic from across the river but it’s now far less notable inside. Amboise is where Charles VIII (born 1470-reigned 1493-died 1498) died from fracturing his skull on a door lintel (careful when visiting old castles, folks, they weren’t designed with Disney building standards in mind, and just you try suing someone for tripping on a cobblestone).

Charles VIII and Queen Anne of Brittany were childless, so with no direct heir his cousin Louis d’Orléans ascended to the throne as Louis XII (1462-1498-1515).

Louis XII

Louis may have had Orleans in his name but he was a native Blésois, as the inhabitants of Blois are called. A century earlier, in 1391, his grandfather Duke Louis I d’Orléans, brother to then king Charles VI, had purchased the fortress of the Counts of Blois whose power had waned. He took full control of the county six years later. While most of the counts’ fortress was razed to its foundations to make way for the new castle of the mounting Orleans clan, Louis I kept the fortress’s Great Hall (1214), one of the largest civil halls in France still existing today from that period.

Louis XII would in turn raze much of the castle of his father and grandfather, again conserving the Great Hall as he pursued a transformation of the family castle to make it worthy of a king. (We’ll return to the Great Hall later in our visit.)

Louis XII greets us above the entrance.

Below him, his symbol: the crowned porcupine. His motto: qui s’y frotte s’y pique, meaning rub against him and you’ll get pricked (literally) or cross swords with him at your peril or if you don’t watch out you’ll get burned.

The initials to either side of the porcupine: L for Louis and A for Anne, you guessed it, of Brittany, his cousin’s widow. Anne was no looker, but having the duchy of Brittany in her dowry made her quite the catch. Louis therefore obtained the annulment of his own childless first marriage to wed her. Anne’s symbol, the symbol of Brittany, was the ermine, a pattern of black stoat (weasel) coats against a white background.

Viewed from the outer square, Louis XII’s brick-and-stone wing, circa 1500, speaks of the end of an era (Gothic). Inside we follow the call of a new era (Renaissance), a pleasure palace with a vast hallway and a succession of royal apartments. The main Louis XII wing now houses the town’s Beaux-Art Museum (more on the museum later). A chapel, truncated by subsequent developments at Blois, also remains from this time.

Louis and Anne had two surviving children, daughters, Claude and Renée, however the succession laws of the French kings stated that the crown could only pass to a male heir. That meant the search for good (i.e. useful) marriages for the girls and likely inheritance of the crown by cousin François (Francis). There was therefore no better marriage for Claude (de France), the elder daughter, than to cousin Francois (d’Orléans).

Francois I

In 1515, less than a year into their marriage, Louis XII died and Claude’s husband became King Francois the First (Ier in French). (France has had plenty of Kings Louis and Charles and several Kings Henri but only two Kings Francois, the second being his grandson who reigned for only 17 months before dying from an inner ear problem at age 16.)

Claude, already duchess of Brittany by virtue of her mother Anne (she also inherited her mother’s looks), was therefore queen. Claude died at the age of 24, which gave her enough time to have seven children, including the future king Henri II—or perhaps it’s better said that having seven children by the age of 24 killed her, and getting syphilis from her husband didn’t help.

While Francois has gone down in history as a powerful builder king, Claude is remembered in the name of a sensual green or yellow-green plum, la reine claude, found ripe in markets in August. Francois I remarried after Claude’s death but had no children with his second wife, Eleanore of Austria, though plums continued to grow in the castle gardens. (Those gardens no longer exist; the city has grown into it.)

Francois grew up at the Chateau d’Amboise. It was there that he invited Leonardo da Vinci to be his neighbor. But Claude was naturally fond of her home castle at Blois and Francois I was intent on keeping it up-to-date. That meant tearing down portions of his predecessor’s château, already démodé, and creating something stylish and avant-garde.

This year France is commemorating the 500th anniversary of the coronation and reign of Francois (Francis) I. Chateaux great (e.g. Chambord) and small (e.g. Beauregard), however deeply or tangentially touched by the architectural and decorative spirit of the era of Francois I, are unfurling images of the broad-shouldered king with the long straight nose, sporting a thin moustache trickling into a full beard, wearing tights or armor, sitting in equestrian glory or standing in fur-lined grace. Blois itself is hosting a bookish exhibition called “Royal Treasures, the Library of François I,” running July 4-Oct. 18, 2015.

The equestrian statue of Louis XII may get the photo op at the entrance to Blois Castle, but it’s Francois I’s see-and-be-seen staircase that draws the lens once in the courtyard—though how to photograph it properly without looking like it’s been seen in a funhouse mirror is anyone’s guess.

Let me try again.

I give up. Photography may have become the lazy man’s travel writing but a skilled photographer still has his place.

Francois I (1494-1515-1547) would go on to launch enormous royal projects at Chambord, Fontainebleau and the Louvre, but he made his first mark on royal architecture at Blois. Palaces constructed or altered in his name were signed with his royal symbol the fire-breathing salamander and the motto nutrisco et extinguo referring to flames that nourish his people and extinguish his enemies.

The salamander sets the tone for decorative relief by the base of the showy outer staircase that defines the Francois I wing.

This is Blois’ architectural claim to fame. With loggia for nobility to look out onto the courtyard and to be seen from below, the theatrical staircase (1515-1519) and the wing of the castle that it serves set the stage for a new architectural style that would now developing throughout the valley. The Francois I wing gave royal momentum to the French Renaissance, thanks largely to Italian architects and decorators in its early phases.

This is no Eiffel Tower. Go to the top of the staircase and you’ll have little more than a view of tourist tripping over cobblestones down below (be sure to look up, though at the way in which the structure meets the ceiling). Nevertheless, this remains one of the architectural treasures of the Loire Valley. Again, not enough to plan a honeymoon around, but there you have it, 16th-century architectural sophistication—dramatic staircases were becoming all the rage.

If approaching from the train station, a 10-15 minute walk, your first view of the chateau is the back of the Francois I wing. Based on an Italian model, it looks more like an apartment building in Rome than a royal castle along the Loire.

It used to overlook the castle gardens but now faces a city road that wraps around a tremendous Atlas cedar. Beyond the cedar, one can also see from the balcony the orangery where citrus trees from the castle gardens were placed in winter. (The historical building now houses a gastronomic restaurant.)

Francois gets the architectural shout-out for this wing with the famous staircase, but the historical tale told inside speaks more about the era of his grandson Henri III.

Henri III

Francois I’s son Henri II (1519-1547-1559), who eventually died from being poked in the eye during a jousting tournament, preferred to place his architectural monograms elsewhere, including on the Louvre and at Fontainebleau. But Blois continues to speak of the presence of Henri II’s queen Catherine de Medicis and of their third son, Henri III (1551-1574-1589).

Henri III’s era of the French Court was as perverse and manipulative as our own in terms of power struggles, festivities, fashion, intrigue and assassination. We have our own politics in which a vocal, heavily armed group proclaims that the “true” religion should guide policy; we, too, go in for fear mongering, lies and rumors passed off for evidence that one man or one party will destroy life as we know it; we too hear the siren of the politics of nostalgia, etc. Admittedly, we prefer to assassinate character more than body these days and we pretend that telling an armed public that “someone ought to shoot that guy” is just an expression of disagreement, but we surround our politicians with a sizeable security detail just in case.

In 1576 and again in 1588, Henri III convoked at Blois an assembly of the Three Estates: the clergy, the nobility and the Third Estate, i.e. all others. The assembly took place in the Great Hall of 1214, originally built as a multi-purpose hall for the Counts of Blois. At its best the Estates (or States) General, as it was called, served as an advisory body offering wise counsel to the king. Otherwise it might be a way in which those with lesser or no power could let off steam or a quarrelsome nuisance that the king would ignore. The body met periodically at various venues from the early 14th century until 1614, then not at all until 1789, when discontent was so loud that Louis XVI could no longer postpone the reunion—but more than reunion, revolution was in the air.

The Wars of Religion between Catholics and Protestants marked the tenure of Catherine de Medicis and her three successive royal sons. It came to a head during the reign of Henri III. It was bad enough that factions of warring nobility saw no room to compromise, but the ultra-Catholics felt that disaster would befall the kingdom since Henri III was childless, making the heir to the throne his cousin Henri de Navarre, a Protestant.

The Great Hall is a magnificent space for its time and for a family photo op on the throne. Portions of the apartments of Catherine de Medicis and of Henri III are also visible. It’s less the heavily restored décor that makes them significant as the events that took place there. With the right guide (human or audio), the events that took place but gets us thinking about how similar the power struggles of the late 16th century are to the politics of our own time.

In order to calm the warrior spirit of the hawkish Catholic nobility and clergy against the Protestants (Huguenots) on the occasion of the Estates General of 1588, Henri III had the Catholic leader Duke Henri de Guise assassinated as the duke was walking through the king’s bedroom to a supposed pow-wow with the king.

“My God he’s tall,” the king is reported to have said upon seeing his slain rival. “He even looks taller dead than alive.”

The Duke de Guise’s brother, the Cardinal de Guise, also a conspirator against the king, was assassinated in Blois Castle the following day.

Twelve days later, Queen Mother Catherine de Medicis, died here of natural causes at the age of 79.

And seven months later, on August 2, 1589, Henri III was in turn assassinated, caught off guard while on the pierced chair (i.e. the can) at the royal Chateau de Saint Cloud (near Paris). His assassin was a monk named Jacques Clément who represented forces of what we would now call the religious far right.

Upon Henri III’s death the king’s chronicler Pierre de l’Estoile wrote: “This king would have been a good prince had he been born in a better century.” It’s doubtful though that such a century has ever existed.

Henri IV

Heir and party to the Wars of Religion, Henri IV was not only a distant cousin rising to the throne but was also a Protestant, two strikes against him that meant he had to conquer his kingdom. He would eventually convert to Catholicism to be in phase with the majority, but without abandoning the reformers.

Photo Henri IV. The central role that the Loire Valley had played in royal politics was coming to an end as the Bourbon kings asserted a firm hand throughout the kingdom and took up more frequent residence in Paris and then Versailles. Henri IV’s main association with the Loire is far downstream at Nantes, where he signed the edict that granted the right to Protestants to practice their religion in peace along with certain politic rights, thus closing the Wars of Religion in France.

He nevertheless showed enough interest enough in Blois to order the construction of a new building in the gardens. As a builder, his heart—before it was pierced by an assassin monk in Paris in 1612—was more focused on urban projects in the capital.

After his assassination his queen Marie de Medicis assumed the regency for underage Louis XIII. But a power struggle ensued when he son reached royal majority in his mid-teens and he exiled her to Blois to keep her from meddling in affairs of state. A painting in the Louvre, La Fuite de Blois by Rubens, shows her escaping from Blois through the construction site that had been launched by Henri IV. That building was never completed and was eventually demolished.

(To recap royal deaths from 1498-1612: Charles VIII died from banging his head on a door lintel at age 27; Louis XII died from intestinal trouble at age 52; Francois I died from septicemia related to fistula around the unmentionables and kidney failure at age 53; Henri II died from a brain infection caused by being poked in the eye at a jousting tournament at age 40; Francois II died from an ear infection at age 16; Charles IX died from pleurisy at age 23; Henri III was assassinated by a monk will sitting on the can at age 47, and Henri IV was assassinated by a monk while riding in his carriage at age 56. Not pretty, but, ah, but the castles they built!)

Gaston, Duc d’Orléans

Louis XIII saw no need to keep Blois Castle in the French crown and so gave it to his younger brother Gaston in 1626. Had the power days of Blois ended? Not if Gaston could help it. Any pretext was good for Gaston (1608-1660) to conspire against or otherwise disobey his brother because as long as Louis XIII and Queen Anne didn’t have a son he remained first in line for the throne.

By the second decade of their childless marriage, Gaston could reasonably dream of occupying the throne should his older brother predecease him. Blois would then become a royal residence again.

So Gaston hired one of the top architects of the time, Francois Mansart, to build a new wing to his castle, thus bringing Blois into the modern era of the 17th century. Gaston may well have rebuilt the entire castle, razing the previous structures like an old villa on beachfront property, but the throne eluded him. In 1738, after nearly 23 years of marriage, Anne of Austria gave birth to a son (presumably fathered by Louis XIII). The existence of a healthy boy distanced Gaston one step further from the crown, and when Louis XIII died five years later, the boy became Louis XIV.

The Gaston wing resembles a stand-alone chateau and is notable for its relatively early Classicism, but viewed from the courtyard it sticks out as ambition gone wrong; the focal point of the courtyard remains the Francois I wing with its external staircase. Architect Francois Mansart would lend his name to the mansard, a high-pitched roof pierced with windows, then coming into fashion.

The grace of the Gaston/Mansart wing comes especially from the symmetry of the central structure with pavilions on either side reaching out to embrace the courtyard. Through his work here and elsewhere, Mansart nevertheless helped usher in an architectural style that would later become associated not with Gaston Ier but with Louis XIV.

Louis XIV’s prime minister Mazarin, tired of Gaston’s conspiring against the crown during the king’s youth, eventually exiled Gaston to Blois. There he lost the ambition (and perhaps the funding) to complete his dream castle.

The decorative elements of the interior were never finished. The interior monumental staircase of the Gaston wing, crowned by a copula, looks like a grand stage between plays. But Blois was now far from center stage, and the Loire Valley itself was soon but a sideshow as, about the time of Gaston’s death in 1660, Louis XIV began drawing plans for the entire theater district move to Versailles.

The Beaux Arts Museum

The main Louis XII wing houses a small collection that lends itself as much to pleasant if disinterested meandering as it does to a more studious examination of representative 16th- and 17th-century paintings, and to a lesser extent 18th- and early 19th-century works, including glossy, theatrical historical works from the early 19th century called “troubadour” paintings.

For students of 19th-century restorations of medieval and Renaissance castles, Blois Castle is a must see. But since none of those students is reading this, we might be tempted to pretend that that the original equestrian statue at the castle entrance wasn’t actually destroyed during the Revolution and that this window with the ermine of Anne of Brittany has been safely in place for 500 years.

No, let’s not pretend. Let’s be truthful here: The history of French chateaux is rarely that of a single moment in history, and all the more so at Blois. What we see is the result of evolving tastes and ambitions, good fortune and bad, and restoration. In 1788 Louis XVI, five years short of the guillotine, abandoned any royal prerogative to Blois Castle. It then served as barracks for troops and officers with no interest in protecting its historical significance. With the Revolution soon banging at the door there was no interest in protecting its royal symbols either. What was saved was saved for practical rather than historical or emotional reasons.

Then, several decades later, historical mindfulness came calling. In 1840 Blois became one of the first royal complexes in France to be designated a historical monument. Major restoration began several years later, beginning with the rehabilitation of the Francois I wing. The Beaux-Arts Museum opened in 1869.

A room inside this chateau is dedicated to the 19th-century restorers, particularly one Félix Duban, an architect who oversaw the restoration of Blois Castle until his death in 1870. In his terrific travel book “A Little Tour in France,” Henry James, writing in the 1880s, laments the heavy-handed restoration work that he encounters on his tour of the provinces. Nevertheless, it’s thanks to that post-royal history—as barracks, as possession of the city, as object of restoration—that we get to see and to appreciate the lessons in history and architecture that Blois teaches.

To Blois or not to Blois

That remains the question. Is it more rewarding to aim for the monumental unity of Chambord, the loveliness of Chenonceau, the dramatic view of Chaumont, or to get studious with Blois? You can’t go wrong as you plan or wing your way through the castle-rich area of the Loire Valley between Blois and Saumur. Still, a traveler much choose between chateaux while leaving time to enjoy the other pleasures that the region offers—vineyards, gardens, culinary explorations, a zoo, a long stroll by the river.

The architectural developments themselves may seem insignificant 500 years on. Nevertheless, Blois, considered a (perhaps the) key to the Loire Valley, deserves attention.

© 2015 Gary Lee Kraut

Useful information

Château de Blois, Blois Castle, is open daily except Dec. 25 and Jan. 1. Fencing demonstrations are given July 13-Aug. 16, 2015. One reason to spend the night in or near Blois is to attend the wonderful sound-and-light show in the castle courtyard, April 4-Sept. 20, 2015.

Blois Tourist Office, is next to the castle at 23 Place du Château. Tel. 02 54 90 41 41. The office and its website also provide information about chateaux in the surrounding area.

Maison de la Magie, the magic museum and fun house across the square from the castle entrance. Watch for the dragons in the window. Open April 4-Sept. 20 and Oct. 17-Nov. 1, 2015.

Loire à Vélo is the name of the Loire Valley biking system covering a cycle trail of about 500 miles. Its official website is here.

Getting to Blois: From Paris, there are infrequent direct trains to Blois from the Austerlitz Station. They take 1 hour 25 minutes. More frequent indirect trains take 2 hours, arriving in Blois via Orleans (from Paris’s Austerlitz Station) or via Saint Pierre des Corps (from Paris’s Montparnasse Station). A daytrip from Paris is possible. One worthwhile approach to beginning your longer Loire Valley stay in Blois is to spend the first day and perhaps night in the town before renting bikes or a car for wider explorations in the valley. Bus service from Blois goes to the nearby chateaux of Beauregard, Cheverny and Chambord. Inquire at the Blois Tourist Office or see the bus schedule here.

Lodging in Blois and the surroundings area

B&Bs

La Maison de Thomas, 12 rue Beauvoir, 41000 Blois. Tel. 09 81 84 44 59 or 06 60 14 41 41. In the heart of the town, a friendly townhouse for those without wheels or for a night in Blois before or after a biking trip.

16 Place Saint Louis, 16 place Saint Louis, 41000 Blois. Tel. 02 54 74 13 61. At Philippe Escoffre’s B&B a 5-minute hike uphill from center, three cozy rooms look out to the cathedral and over the river. Yes, the name is the address.

Le Plessis, 195 rue Albert 1er, 41000 Blois. Tel. 02 54 43 80 08. On the downstream edge of the town with a chemical-free, salt-water swimming pool.

Le Clos Pasquier, 10-12, Impasse de l’Orée du Bois, 41000 Blois. Tel. 02 54 58 84 08. Claire and Laurent Nicot’s B&B in a 15th-century manor house is another 1.5 miles further downstream.

Hotels

Côté Loire – Auberge Ligérienne 2 place de la Grève, 41000 Blois. Tel. 02 54 78 07 86. A 2-star hotel and restaurant in Blois by the river.

L’Auberge du Centre, 34 Grande Rue, 41120 Chitenay. Tel. 02 54 70 42 11. Nine miles south of Blois. I found this 3-star village hotel with a pleasant restaurant. A choice stop during a biking trip in this portion of the valley.

La Maison d’à Côté, 26 rue de Chambord, 41350 Montlivault. Tel. 02 54 20 62 30. An 8-room inn with restaurant (1 star Michelin in 2015) 6 miles upstream from Blois toward Chambord

Le Château du Breuil, 23 route de Fougères, 41700 Cheverny. Tel. 02 54 44 20 20. Ten miles southeast of Blois, in the countryside two miles from the Chateau de Cheverny, Véronique and Bernard Gattolliat’s 39-room 4-star hotel with restaurant an swimming pool.

Domaine des Hauts de Loire, 79 rue Gilbert Navard, 41150 Onzain. Tel. 02 54 20 72 57.Ten miles downstream from Blois, across the river from Chaumont, a 4-star chateau hotel and restaurant. The 170-acre property also has a tennis court, outdoor pool, a pond where one can fish and bikes.

Restaurants in Blois

For a daytripper, one of the cafés below the chateau de Blois should suffice, or simply a sandwich and pastries from one of the bakeries in that area.

For those spending the evening: I’ve fond memories of a relaxed, gastronomic dinner at Christophe Cosme’s Le Rendez-vous des Pêcheurs, 27 rue du Foix. Tel. 02 54 74 67 48. Closed Sun. and Mon. There’s also the Auberge Ligérienne, a part of the hotel Côté Loire noted above. For a more formal meal in an airy historical setting there’s L’Orangerie du Château, 1 avenue Jean-Laigret. Tel. 02 54 78 05 36. It occupies the former citrus green house or orangery of the chateau. Also closed Sun. and Mon. For a more contemporary decor, more contemporary gastronomy, Assa, one mile downstream from center on the edge of the Loire, has 1 Michelin star (2015). 189 quai Ulysse Besnard. Tel. 02 54 78 09 01. Closed Sun. dinner, Mon. Tues.

– GLK

The post Blois Castle: The Key to the Loire Valley appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Tourists in the Loire Valley for a few days generally head only for the A-list castles. That means the three Cs in this part of the valley: Cheverny, Chambord and Chaumont, while eyeing a blockbuster fourth, Chenonceau, further downstream.

But for sightseers who dislike crowds and relish the possibility of running into a congenial châtelain (chateau owner), quieter slices of 16th-century splendor are a few minutes away. Simply make a beeline 3 miles southeast of Blois to Beauregard to visit one of the valley’s many beautiful B-listers.

Like the 426-room Chambord, Beauregard served as one of François I’s hunting retreats. But unlike the national domain of Chambord (770,000 visitors per year), Beauregard is a small, family-owned château that draws approximately 25,000 yearly visitors.

It may be comparatively small in size, but “it’s a bigger responsibility than I expected,” says Guy du Pavillon, whose great-grandmother purchased the property in 1926. “I’m very, very grateful to my mother, who ran it alone for many years. She gave me the chance to establish my family before handing over the reins.”

Like many Loire getaways, its vacation vocation insured that few events of significant historic importance occurred on its grounds.

Jean du Thier, part-time poet and protector of Joachim du Bellay and Pierre Ronsard, left the largest architectural footprint. He purchased the place in 1545, near the end of the reign of Francois I and was soon working in the government of the latter’s son and heir Henri II.

Since Jean du Thier’s time there have been countless renovations, ”some harmonious, some less so,” says du Pavillon with a sigh. However, Beauregard’s major claim-to-fame, an extraordinary portrait collection housed in a 26-meter long Renaissance gallery, has hardly changed a whisker since its 17th-century inauguration.

While the 327 portraits are not stand-alone works of art, the ensemble—which amounts to a 400-year-old equivalent of Time’s Person of the Year covers—is fascinating. Bien sûr, it’s mostly Man of the Year as only 20 women made the cut via marriage or martyrdom. Apart from the gender imbalance, the selection is remarkably international as it features Albanians, Austrians, and Ottoman Turks.

With whimsical impracticality, the 17th-century owners covered the floor with 5,600 delicate Delft tiles that quickly proved too fragile for foot traffic. (What you see today, partially covered, are the replacements that that same family was wise to order.) Chaises longues are in place so that guests can lean back and admire the decorative ceiling, richly painted in lapis-lazuli.

Du Pavillon hasn’t abandoned his day job in Paris in fire-proof textiles but still spends several days a week at Beauregard.

”What I love best is rising at dawn and jogging through the property. That’s when I make notes for the gardeners.”

Six gardeners are required to keep the 100-acre estate in bloom with fruit bushes, heritage roses, color-coordinated flower beds and a collection of trees from around the world. French/English quizzes for children are posted on the trees. Unlike its sister châteaux, Beauregard encourages guests to walk on the grass to better explore.

There’s a medieval century chapel on the grounds (with a scallop medallion to prove it served as a stop on the pilgrimage to Compostela, Spain) as well as a 17th-century ice-house. Filled with straw-covered ice blocks, it kept the castle’s white wine chilled until refrigeration took over in the early 20th century.

Better-than-average snacks and lunches are available (everyday but Tuesday) and there’s a guest-house (sleeping five) for people who can’t bear to leave. Bicycle rentals on site. The two orangeries (seating 70 or 120) can be rented for private parties.

© 2015, Corinne LaBalme.

Château de Beauregard, 12 Chemin de la Fontaine, 41120 Cellettes. Tel: 02 54 70 41 65. Beauregard is closed from mid-fall through much of the winter. See the website for exact dates and opening times.

Getting There: Beauregard is 3 miles southeast of Blois. From Paris, there are infrequent direct trains to Blois from the Austerlitz Station. They take 1:25. More frequent indirect trains take 2 hours, arriving in Blois via Orleans (from Paris’s Austerlitz Station) or via Saint Pierre des Corps (from Paris’s Montparnasse Station). While it’s preferable to have your own wheels (car, van, motorcycle or bicycle) for leisurely explorations of chateaux and vineyards in the area, there’s bus service from April to August between the chateaux of Blois, Chambord, Cheverny and Beauregard. Bus information can be found here.

Also see our articles about the nearby chateaux of Chambord, Cheverny and Blois.

The post Château de Beauregard: A Castle Road Less Taken appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

When you can’t get any bigger, you just have to get better. Chambord’s 20-mile wall encloses a 426-room castle plus 13,443 acres of formal gardens and untrammeled forests where deer and wild boar roam, making it the largest enclosed park in Europe (and about the same square footage as the City of Paris). Right now, Chambord is in the midst of a massive development plan (€4.5 million invested in 2014) to make the castle more user-friendly and, ultimately, self-financing.

”Chambord is a conceptual castle,” explains Jean d’Haussenville, General Manager of the Domaine National de Chambord. Conceptual is an odd adjective choice for a monster stack of stone but it fits. François (Francis) I, the king most identified with the French Renaissance, commissioned the rural getaway in 1519, but Chambord failed as a functional hunting lodge. Its giant rooms, built around the outline of a Greek Cross much like the contemporary Saint Peter’s in Rome, resisted warmth in the frigid game season. Comfort-conscious François only spent 72 nights there during his 32-year reign.

Far more many days and nights are being devoted to celebrating this year the 500th anniversary of the Francois’s ascension to the throne. Francois inherited the crown upon the death of his childless cousin Louis XII in 1515 and ruled until his own death in 1547. Eleven major chateaux in the Loire Valley and many lesser chateaux and monuments, along with cities and towns throughout the area are promoting their kinship with that period. The purity of Chambord’s architecture as a reflection of the reign of Francois I makes it a major marker of the commemorative year.

Despite its vocation as a retreat after the hunt, Chambord’s frilly, massive silhouette is as much Beauty as Beast. The lacey turrets appear to pirouette in the wind and its slinky, Escher-esque double-helix stairwell is the White Album carved into stone. The jury’s still out on whether Leonardo designed the stairwell (building records went missing centuries ago) but even if he didn’t the château is infused with the artist’s charisma. ”Chambord,” insists d’Haussenville, ”is the Mona Lisa of architecture.”

Owned by the French state since 1930 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1981, Chambord is currently 86% self-supporting with €16.5 million in annual operating expenses, already quite an achievement in French parlance. Its goal of 100% self-financing demands a push for 1 million visitors/year instead of the 770,000 at present. Chambord has recently pursued partnerships with royal sites of comparable candle-power (Beijing’s Summer Palace; Udaipur in Rajasthan) to build awareness around the world.

The château is also revamping its hotel and restaurant offers; opening new parts of the castle (like the 18th century kitchens in the West Tower next September); refurbishing the French formal gardens; restructuring the reception area; re-designing the façade lighting, and going into the wine business by planting vineyards this spring.

The vineyards will be growing Francois I’s musky fetish Romorantin grape, along with pinot noir. Romorantin, a white grape, was first introduced to the area (specifically to plant near the chateau at Romorantin 10 miles southeast of Chambord) by the king at about the time he ordered the construction of Chambord. The vines came from Burgundy, but the Cours-Cheverny wine-growing zone that one passes through when approaching Chambord from the west has for some time now been the only place in the world that that fully bases a wine on the grape.

How does all the improvement work impact on your personal visit to this iconic castle in the next few months? Rest assured: Some things won’t change. You will still have a multitude of tours (including wildlife jeep safaris in the nature reserve); equestrian shows; bike, golf cart and boat rentals; art shows; theater, and live concerts.

Events: The deer begin their theatrical mating rituals in the forest in mid-September, but that’s not the only thing to look forward to.

Molière’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme débuted at Chambord in 1670 in front of Louis XIV and the Court, and the Comédie Française production (with Christian Lacroix costumes) returns for two outdoor performances on May 22 and 23. National Archeology Days are June 19 to 21 and World Music Day (free admission) is celebrated on June 20. The Chambord Music Festival, July 3 to 18, kicks off with the Doulce Mémoire concert that recreates a Renaissance ball in honor of the 500 anniversary of François I’s coronation. Through August 30, the Chateau presents the playful contemporary paintings of Guillaume Bruère that turn a Francis Bacon-esque focus on François I and the French royal family.

On June 22, the castle debuts the HistoPad, a digital tour guide (in 12 languages) that provides remarkable value for its 8€ sticker price. (Only one needed per family.) With a swipe of the fingertip, you can see how each room was decorated in the past. “Enhanced reality” features also grant visitors x-ray vision to see through walls and into closets and coffers. There’s a kid’s treasure hunt included in the HistoPad tour that adults may try to hog. It’s very informative and lots of fun.

Lodging: If you want low price lodgings on the grounds, book a room before September 30 when the no-frills, two star Hotel Saint Michel, located a few feet from the castle’s doors, closes for an 18-month expansion/renovation. This genteel 19th century property has been ripe for a luxury makeover for decades, and it’s finally happening. Architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte (Paris’s Mandarin Oriental, Hotel Nell) has been tapped for the country chic re-do, so kiss those 75€ rooms (with no curtains) goodbye. Michelin-starred Chef Jean-Pierre Vigato (Apicius) will supervise the future dining options.

You can still stay on the Chambord grounds at a reasonable price with a little help from your friends. On the property there are two elegant self-catering cottages, inaugurated in 2013, that sleep eight and six, equipped with washing machines, dishwashers, TV, barbecue, wifi and free bikes. The tiny village that abuts the castle has souvenir stands and sandwich shops.

Getting There: Chambord is a 2-hour drive south from Paris. The closest major town is Blois, 9 miles west. While it’s preferable to have your own wheels (car, van, motorcycle or bicycle) to combine a visit to Chambord with stops at other chateaux in the area, shuttles to Chambord from the Blois train station operate in summer and take 25 minutes. There is also bus service from April to August between the chateaux of Blois, Chambord, Cheverny and Beauregard. Bus information can be found here. From Paris, there are infrequent direct trains to Blois from the Austerlitz Station. They take 1:25. More frequent indirect trains take 2:00, arriving in Blois via Orleans (from Paris’s Austerlitz Station) or via Saint Pierre des Corps (from Paris’s Montparnasse Station).

Further information: For more information about Chambord, including opening times and entrance fees, see Chambord’s official website.

Corinne LaBalme, May 2015.

Also see our articles about the nearby chateaux of Cheverny, Beauregard and Blois.

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I do, and I was recently reminded of that while visiting Saumur.

It happened when I was exploring Saumur and the surrounding area, Le Saumurois, with friends, enjoying for several July days the calm and sweetness of the Loire Valley, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The fruit was young on the vine. The white tuffeau limestone shone bright in the sun.

And it shone bright in the lamp light.

We were staying in Montsoreau, 8 miles upstream from Saumur.

We lodged in a pleasing little rustically chic hotel named La Marine de la Loire, where an explosion of purple hydrangeas galore greeted us in the lobby.

The sunsets over the river were lovely.

One evening, on the way to the local creperie, a hot-air balloon passed overhead.

One afternoon we visited the former Abbey of Fontevraud, where the recumbent statue of Eleanor of Aquitaine, lying beside her second husband, Henry II, reminded us to cut back on social media time and pick up a good book.

We had a glass of local sparkling wine and some regional cheese at the bar in one of the abbey’s former chapels, where we were the only clients.

Before leaving the abbey I bought a refrigerator magnet.

Just outside the abbey, we had a fine dinner at Le Plantagenêt, restaurant of the village’s appealing hostellerie La Croix Blanche.

In the morning we drove past fields of sunflowers, wheat, scallions and roses to Rochemenier, where the bell tower was missing one eye.

We enjoyed lunch in the shade at Les Délices des Roches before stepping down to explore Rochemenier’s troglodyte abodes and farmyards.

After several days we began our drive back to Paris, crossing to the right bank of the Loire, where we stopped for one last view of Saumur.

Returning to the car we noticed that someone had posted a note on a tree.

It read like poetry.

Blond Girl, (that’s my only information)

I suppose you’re an English girl and
I’m sure you speak English…
I think you cleary see who I am.
I would like to see you again and
if my desire is yours too, my number
is written in the spot where I was
sitting when our eyes met for the
second time.

See you soon, I hope…

© 2014, photos, videos and text by Gary Lee Kraut, except for the text of the letter, author unknown.

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* * *

Wines produced from organic vineyards, having gotten their bearings straight in the 1980s and 1990s, took off at the turn of the century and have now made their mark throughout the winegrowing regions of France.

The number of organic vineyards (of which biodynamics are a subset) has expanded substantially since 1999. In 2010 more than 6% of the surface area of vineyards was considered organic in France, led by the regions Languedoc-Roussillon, Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur and Aquitaine.

Europe is far and away the world leader in organic wine farming, with Spain, Italy and France leading the way as producers and with Germany joining the group as a major consumer. In France, where sales of wines produced from organic agriculture increased by 70% between 2005 and 2010, you’d be hard pressed to find organic wines from Italy or Spain since 99% of the domestic consumption is homegrown. (All statistics above are from a study by Agence Bio, 2011).

And much of that consumption is taking place in Paris which, over the past decade, has witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of wine shops, wine bars, cafés, restaurants and sommeliers proposing wines produced from organic (bio or biologique) and biodynamic (biodynamique) agriculture. Such wines have even become mainstream in some quarters of the capital.

But what exactly is a biodynamic vineyard and what are the advantages or disadvantages of using biodynamics in developing wine?

Jeanne Bernard, an American living in Paris since 1985, set out to answer those questions in her documentary “New Wine From France,” an examination of the world of biodynamic wines through three uncommon vineyards in the Loire Valley and their winegrowers.

Jeanne had been a freelance writer and translator in Paris for roughly 20 years before taking the leap into filmmaking by writing and directing the documentary. In 2011 “New Wine From France” was shown in two wine film festivals: Oenovideo in Arbois, France, and Most Festival in the Penedès region near Barcelona, Spain. It has also been screened several times in France and can now be viewed in its entirety on Vimeo.

France Revisited caught up with the filmmaker as she was preparing one of the screenings in the Paris region.

France Revisited: Between your arrival in Paris in 1985 and your decision in 2009 to write and direct “New Wine From France” you’d probably drunk your share of French wine, but you were neither a wine expert nor a filmmaker. How then did such an ambitious project come about?

Jeanne Bernard: You are right. I was no wine expert. And I had never made a film. However I was a writer and storyteller. And I can’t think of a subject more fascinating than wine. It’s not only a vast subject, but it’s a profound one. It has cultural, geographical, historical, geological, and of course religious and even mystical aspects. It tells us much about ourselves.  And I had always had a strong interest in wine, going back to a visit I made with my parents to the Paul Masson vineyard in Santa Clara Valley when I was a teenager. Later, when I moved to France, I found that when I asked questions about wine, the answers people gave were unsatisfactory.

The word “biodynamic” came up once in conversation with Hervé Lethielleux in my local wine bar in Paris. Hervé is a wine expert and was explaining what we were drinking. I wrote an article about the subject and interviewed Hervé, but I knew I had to do more. I could see myself in the vineyards with a camera. That’s when I knew I had to make a film. It all had to do with Hervé making a comment as he sipped a glass. Of course, the project would never have come about without the great support of IronBreaker. My brother John Bernard, the man behind IronBreaker, showed utter faith in me from a creative point of view.

FR: How did you learn all that goes into making a documentary, from writing to filming to creating a soundtrack to editing and now promoting?

JB: The main ingredient in making a documentary is passion. It’s what motivates you to do all the research and to lay the groundwork, for example, by taking hundreds of photographs before you even touch a movie camera; it’s what pushes you to convince other people to spend money on your project, and it’s what makes you tackle the problems that come up on various levels—technical, organizational, etc.  And passion is not something you learn; it is something you have or don’t have for a given subject or for an angle on that subject.

Various passions came together in the making of this film. There were things I didn’t know about the wine world, that I didn’t understand; I realized also that these are things most of us don’t know and don’t think about when we drink wine. I wanted to understand. As for the rest, the writing and the filming, etc – I am a storyteller. I put in the hours, pulled out the index cards and the highlighter pens. I spent hours watching footage. I spent a lot of time alone, thinking.

I was lucky to have great technical people to work with in Franz Kennedy, the photography director, and Henri Le Boursicaud, the sound engineer. I worked side by side with each of them. I learned a lot from them; we had a great working relationship. I learned the technical things, and both Franz and Henri, who master these elements apart from being very creative people, showed respect for the way I worked. I respected their opinions also and this had a very positive effect on the whole process.

FR: What’s the difference between organic and biodynamic winegrowing?

JB: The film answers this question. Basically organic is the non-use of pesticides. Biodynamics is organic, but it takes things to another level. It is based on a positive philosophy of looking at nature and seeing how it works on its own, then working with it so that it gives its best to the grapes.

FR: In taste, what are the most noticeable differences between biodynamic and other wines?

JB: I am not an expert in wine tasting. I am learning every day. What I will say is that top sommeliers have recognized that the taste of the terroir is more apparent in biodynamic wine. For wine connoisseurs, this is a great quality; I would venture to say it is what wine is all about, though it is not necessarily what all wine drinkers think about when drinking a glass of wine. In the film, viewers will see how the organic life of the soil is of the utmost importance in terms of terroir. However, winegrowing and winemaking involve a set of factors, and I wouldn’t want to be categorical or peremptory about taste differences.

FR: In the film you interview the winegrowers Philippe Gourdon of Château Tour Grise, François Chidaine of Domaine François Chidaine, and Thierry Michon of Domaine Saint Nicolas. Why did you choose those three in particular?

JB: I have always loved Loire Valley wines and the Loire Valley itself. Hervé suggested two growers to me, but it was important for me to have three, for structure and balance. I told him to think of a third person. He had just met Thierry Michon and told me Thierry was in the Vendée, had a sparkly personality and was a great winemaker. The Vendée was not at all reputed for its wine, so I was intrigued. When I went out to meet Thierry and tasted his wine, it was obvious he belonged in the film. It was the same with Philippe Gourdon and François Chidaine. They were the right people for the project. All three of these men are great winegrowers, highly respected in the wine world, and they are “men of the earth.” I think the whole project was biodynamic in a way – it was in the stars.

FR: The film was selected for two film festivals in 2011, Oenovideo, a grape and wine film festival held last year in Arbois, France, near the Swiss border, and Most Festival, the first edition of a film festival dedicated to viniculture, wine and cava, near Barcelona. What were those experiences like?

JB: These were great experiences for a wine lover. I learned tons about Jura wine in Arbois and had the great pleasure of meeting the biodynamic winegrower and filmmaker François de Chavanes. Also, the mayor of Château-Chalon and his wife took me on a tour of their village, reputed to be one of the most beautiful in France. There, I learned all about the process involved in making vin jaune and about the importance of the marnes grises on the hillsides around the village. I learned about the different grape varietals there, the rather rustic local varietals. And the Jura has lots of organic winegrowers. I fell in love with Jura wines.

In Spain, Most Festival was great and it was the very first edition, organized by really enthusiastic film and wine lovers, young people. They were welcoming and energetic. They made the foreign filmmakers feel right at home in Catalonia. And I was able to discover the great Spanish cava made in the Penedès region, particularly at Recaredo vineyards, where my film was shown on European Wine Tourism day. I learned quite a bit about the history of winegrowing in the Penedès. They’ve got a very interesting wine museum in the town of Vilafranca del Penedès, where the festival took place. I also showed my film at a viticultural school and drank wine made by its students. I found the people of Catalonia to be very sophisticated and culturally rich; the young people speak several languages, Catalan, Spanish, English and French usually. It was a great experience.

FR: How has your interest in wine or in organic and biodynamic wines in particular developed since completing the film?

JB: When you enter the world of independent winegrowers, you discover it is a very human and generous one. Winegrowers who are passionate about what they do are really fascinating people to listen to. I happen to love wine, so I am having more fun drinking it now than ever. At professional wine tastings, I particularly love listening to winegrowers talk about the way they work and about all the elements involved in growing – the climate, their soil, their grapes and how they respond to these conditions. Their eyes start to light up when they explain how they work. I am learning things all the time, and that’s the great thing about drinking wine. There are always new things to discover.

FR: Any other festivals or screenings on the horizon?

JB: I just received information on a sustainability film festival in Italy. I will look into it. My film was made for television, so I am also working to get it sold there and I hope to get a DVD and VOD distributor into the bargain. More screenings in Paris and the other major cities in France would be great.

FR: What are your favorite wine shops and wine bars in Paris?

JB: I usually buy wine in my neighborhood in the 18th arrondissement. I like the Les Grandes Caves on Rue Damrémont. In fact the shop is so pretty that I filmed it and its manager at the time, Fréderic Navennec. It is now run by Adrienne Reitz and she gives great advice about wine. I also like Les Caves Dargent on Rue Ordenner for its wonderful selection, including by growers Philippe Gourdon and François Chidaine. I like a little wine shop on the Rue Dorsel in Montmartre where you can also get wonderful rillettes d’oie to serve with your wine. And I just discovered a very cool wine shop in the far reaches of the 12th, run by an old-fashioned maître sommelier who used to work at Fouquet’s. He has everything, including very affordable wine, in his shop. But it’s far from where I live! As for wine bars, I like Le Cave Café on rue Marcadet. Good wine selection. The bar is owned by an American. I like O Château near Les Halles. I like a little place on Rue Joseph de Maîstre in Montmartre and also Les Caves Lamarck, which are on the part of Rue Lamarck that winds its way up to Sacré Coeur. I am dying to go to Willie’s Wine Bar because the British owner Mark Williamson is reputed for choosing excellent wine. Plus I have met him and he has a great sense of humor. And soon, I will be anxious to try out a shop that has not yet opened – called L’Etiquette, which will be managed by Hervé Lethielleux. It’ll be on the Ile Saint Louis.

FR: You worked with several musicians living in Paris to create the soundtrack for the documentary. How did you find them and who are they?

JB: This was a great personal pleasure for me. I am a huge music lover, and my friend Chris Kenna provided me with all the music of his that I wanted. Sal Bernardi did the same. Also, the film came about largely because of my hanging out in small bars listening to Chris play with his band Moonray or with Sal. Something just clicked between the rebellious nature of rocking music and rocking wine. Music and wine are fun! My brother John Bernard, the producer of the film, is a fine guitarist and also wrote a piece of music for the film. I could hear music to go along with certain images. I guess when you start to see vineyards in your mind’s eye, and hear music in the background, you start to have a film.

FR: Are you a musician yourself?

JB: I’m a living room musician. In other words, not really. I play the piano a little and have been teaching myself the guitar. I sometimes write songs.

FR: Do you have another documentary or other major project in the works?

JB: I have nothing in the works, but I have lots of ideas.

© 2012

The 52-minute documentary can be viewed online. Grab a glass of wine, sit back and click here.

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UNESCO’s official acknowledgement of inscription to the list in November 2011 describes equitation in the French tradition as:

“… a school of horseback riding that emphasizes harmonious relations between humans and horses. The fundamental horse-training principles and processes are guided by non-violence and lack of constraint, blending human demands with respect for the horse’s body and mood. Knowledge of the animal itself (physiology, psychology, anatomy) and human nature (emotions and the body), are complemented by a horseman’s state of mind that combines skill and respect for the horse. Fluidity of movements and flexibility of joints ensure that the horse participates in the exercises without coercion. Although practised throughout France and elsewhere, the most widely known community is the Cadre Noir of Saumur, based at the National School of Equitation…”

“… The common denominator among riders is the desire to establish close relations with the horse, build mutual respect and work towards achieving ‘lightness’. Cooperation between generations is strong, with respect for the experience of older riders, galvanized by the enthusiasm of younger riders. The Saumur region is also home to instructors, horse breeders, craftspeople (saddlers, boot-makers), veterinary services and blacksmiths. Frequent public displays and galas hosted by the Cadre Noir of Saumur help to sustain the visibility of equitation in the French tradition.”

Here is a video in French showing the Cadre Noir and explaining the development of horseback riding traditions in France:

The official website of the Cadre Noir and the National School of Equitation in Saumur provides information on shows and sporting competitions held at the school that are open to visitors.
Tourist information for the town of Saumur, in the Loire Valley, can be found here.

Other elements of French heritage that have been added to the list in previous years are:
2010
– The gastronomic meal of the French,
– Compagnonnage, network for on-the-job transmission of knowledge and identities,
– The craftsmanship of Alençon (Normandy) needle lace-making,
– Falconry, a living human heritage (France is one of 11 countries designated as sharing this heritage).

2009
– Aubusson tapestry
– Maloya, a form of music, song and dance native to Réunion Island,
– The scribing tradition in French timber framing,
– That year “The Cantu in paghjella: a secular and liturgical oral tradition of Corsica” was also added to the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding.

2008
– Processional Giants and Dragons in Belgium and France.

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