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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

The post Loire Valley: Where There’s a Château There’s a Garden Waiting to Be Discovered appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

The elegant Château de Cheverny is chez moi for Charles-Antoine de Vibraye and his family. His ancestors have resided on the premises for the better part of 600 years and today de Vibraye (who might also be referred to as the Marquis de Vibraye), his wife and three children occupy roughly 10% of it. Much of the rest is open to visitors. Cheverny was one of the first private French estates to open its gates to the public (1922), and de Vibraye welcomes on average 350,000 guests per year to his castle-sweet-castle.

One expects de Vibraye (seen in photo) to describe Cheverny as a museum but the word usine (factory) crops up in his conversation just as often.

”I live inside my family business,” he explains. ”Cheverny belongs to the public, and making the tourist experience serene and enjoyable requires constant attention to detail. You can’t take your eyes off it for a minute. It’s like caring for a small child.”

The result of such devotion is a well-oiled machine. For numerous crowd-pleasing reasons, Cheverny is one of the more theme-parkish of the Loire châteaux. ”But it’s also one of the most authentic,” adds de Vibraye. ”Hardly any other chateau has been continuously occupied. At Cheverny, things may have been added but nothing’s ever been taken away.”

One thing that’s been added is Cheverny’s association with the Francophone comic book hero Tintin. This is the only Loire castle that comic book fans will recognize faster than many art historians. That’s because Belgian cartoonist Hergé based Marlinspike Hall (Château de Moulinsart), the property of Tintin’s buddy Captain Haddock, on Cheverny’s symmetrical silhouette. (Hergé shortened its wings lest Captain Haddock appear to rich.) One of the outbuildings at Cheverny houses a free-standing museum dedicated to Tintin, his dog Milou and other characters, with videos and special effects.

But the main event is the chateau itself. The place-name Cheverny debuted in 1315 on a deed registered to the newly-enobled Hurault family. The seigniorial domain has belonged on and off to the Herault family—of which the de Vibraye family is a branch—ever since. A peaceable existence allowed the domain to sit out the royal and lordly turmoil and high politics of Blois. It did, however, appear on BuzzFeed in 1551 when former royal mistress Diane de Poitiers took a 10-year lease after being evicted from Chenonceau, but almost all of the day-to-day archives have gone missing.

Construction of the current chateau began in 1625 with a design that signaled a strong tilt toward what would become known as Classical architecture. Those also visiting visited Blois Castle on their Loire Valley wanderings will find that Blois’s Gaston d’Orleans wing, begun in 1635, was designed in the same movement of harmony and symmetry.

Two-thirds of the Château de Cheverny is open to the public, without any of the yawn-inducing, near-empty rooms that one often finds in public castles. Visitors can marvel at a royal bedroom that rivals Fort Knox; a luxuriant dining room; suits of armor; playrooms stuffed with vintage toys; fireplaces adorned with gilded dancing girls; a flower-bedecked chapel; and even the current Marquise’s Cinderella-style wedding dress.

Visiting the interior of the chateau gave rise to one burning question for its owner. When you live in a historic château like Cheverny, aren’t you tempted to roll back the brocade bedspreads and sleep in the Royal Bedroom after closing hours?

”Never,” de Vibraye replied firmly. ”Those rooms belong to the public and that’s final. There was a TV crew here recently, filming lots of furniture in close-up, and I must admit I heaved a huge sigh of relief when they left and I got the velvet ropes back in place.”

The chateau interior is compact enough that it can well visited in about 30 minutes, leaving plenty of time to wander through the expansive park and the flower and kitchen gardens, visit the Tintin Museum (additional fee), enjoy the pretty setting at orangerie for a beverage or a bite to eat (inside or out; open April 1 to Nov. 11), perhaps even take boat-ride on property’s waterways.

At the Café de l’Orangerie you can try some locally made beer, but having passed through the Cheverny and Cour-Cheverny vineyards along your way to Cheverny it’s likely that those appellation wines will be the fermented beverage of choice. For a tasting, the official Cheverny Wine Club is housed just outside the castle gate to Cheverny (see below article).

The Hounds
One of the major draws of Cheverny is its kennel for 100 Anglo-French hunting hounds. Cheverny has maintained its hunting heritage and the estate census also includes 11 horses, 70 stags and 200 wild boar.

This is no petting zoo. Those hounds are trained to be in prime hunting shape, and the deer are well advised to be too. The hunt takes place in the surrounding forest and other hunt-friendly woods, twice per week from October through March. About 25 deer are killed each year in keeping with local (departmental) hunting regulations.

Come feeding time you can watch the hounds, tail in the air, devour mass quantities of raw meat in a matter of minutes. 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.

If your kids love dogs, get them to the kennels about 15-30 minutes before feeding time for a ringside view of the buffet. Arrive after the crowd has formed and the kids who are too big to sit on shoulders may miss the show. It’s perfectly safe as the dogs are enclosed in a barred courtyard, although one 4-year-old near us was a bit frightened.

The chateau and grounds are open every day of the year, including holidays.

© 2015, Corinne LaBalme.

Château de Cheverny, 41700 Cheverny. Tel. 02 54 79 96 29.

Getting There: Cheverny is 10 miles southeast of Blois, passing near Château de Beauregard along the way. By car Cheverny is about a 30-minute drive from Blois and Chaumont, in separate directions.

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.
CHEVERNY and COUR-CHEVERNY WINES

Cheverny and Cour-Cheverny are appellations for wines grown between on the south side (left bank) of the Loire roughly between Blois, Chambord, Cheverny and Chaumont. Those are the vineyards you see when driving or biking in this area.

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 specific to this area, introduced by king Francoise I, and so proprietary that it has a capital R.

As with most Loire Valley wines, these all relatively inexpensive, typically 6€ to 12€ per bottle, some a bit more.

Maison des Vins de Cheverny, the official Cheverny Wines Club of the association of winegrowers from the two appellations, is located by the entrance to the chateau, making for an easy tasting stop to get familiar with these wines, at least for those not driving.

Maison des Vins de Cheverny. Open daily from Easter to the beginning of November, 11am-1:15pm and 2:15-6pm. Tel. 02 54 79 25 16

– GLK

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

The post The Marquis, the Hounds and Château de Cheverny 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.