Loire Valley Châteaux Part 2: Cheverny and Chambord

For lunch yesterday, our tour stopped in Amboise.  We picked up some sandwiches from a boulangerie and found a bench with this great view of the Place Michel Debré, across from the Amboise castle.

The flower display at this nearby patisserie drew us in, so we couldn't help but order some sweets after lunch.

Happy and full, we rejoined our tour and set off for the next château.  On the way, we snapped this photo of a different castle, Chaumont, and its surrounding village.  Guess we'll have to save that one for another trip.

I would describe the Château Cheverny as more of a manor house than a castle.  It was built in the 1620's and renovated in the 1780's.

The estate has been in the same family (the Huraults) for more than 6 centuries, and the current owner (the Marquis de Vibraye) still lives in a portion of the building.  This is the Hurault de Vibraye family tree.

Here are some past members of the family: Philippe Hurault, his wife Anne de Thou, and one of his brothers.

A quick tour of the interior:

Red tortoiseshell Boulle-style chest of drawers, family dining room, two-thousand-volume library

Ornate fireplace, the gaudy Grand Salon, bridal gown worn by the current Marquise at their wedding in 1994

One of the most interesting rooms was the Armory.  It all looks very medieval but apparently it was the height of fashion in the 1800's to have an arms room.

 
Another thing that set Cheverny apart was the emphasis on hunting, specifically fox hunting.  There is a kennel onsite housing the 100 or so French hunting hounds belonging to the Marquis.  I would not want to be the poor guy in charge of cleaning up!

"Release the Hounds!"

There was a peaceful English garden behind the chateau, with some hydrangeas (my favorite flower).

In the Middle Ages, owning a dovecote was a sign of wealth and status -- only nobleman could own one.  The pigeons and their eggs were an important food source and their droppings were used for fertilizer.  Nowadays the vine-covered dovecote at Cheverny is used as a water tower for irrigating the kitchen/flower garden.   

Okay, one last view of Cheverny from the English garden before we head on to the next castle.

So we saved the biggest for last: Chambord.  (To all the raspberry liqueur aficianados -- yes, it's that Chambord).  This is the second largest château in France, after the palace at Versailles.  Its architecture was influenced by the Italian Renaissance style, seen especially in the towers and turrets on the roof.  It has more than 420 rooms, but only a handful are open to the public.

François I (you may remember him from Clos Lucé) decided, at the ripe age of 25, that he needed a palace/hunting lodge to show off his wealth.  Building began in 1519 and was still not quite finished by the time of the king's death in 1547.  Later kings completed the project.  All told, François spent only 72 days at the castle.

On to the tour!  The castle's best-known feature is its central double-helix spiral staircase.  There are two spiral staircases winding around a central hollow column.  So if two people each take a different staircase they can each ascend at the same time without seeing each other (very handy if you have a mistress).  It is possible that inspiration for this staircase came from the king's friend, Leonardo da Vinci.

I'm not sure if we were confused by the staircase, or the castle's impractical layout, or just plain château-ed out, but we kind of breezed through the rooms and did not take very many photos.  After four palaces full of bedrooms, do you really need to see another one?  Well, okay...

The vaulted ceilings were ornamented with decorative carvings.

Hunting trophies in one of the galleries.

This room was filled with some of the original towers from the roof.  The entire castle is made of tufa stone, which is a type of limestone that is easily carved but succumbs to erosion over time.  Major restoration work was begun just after WWII, and some of it continues today.

Probably the best part of the tour was going up on to the roof and viewing the turrets and towers for ourselves.  It looked like a small city.

Exhausted after such a long day, we snapped just one last photo of Chambord from the back lawn before we boarded the bus for Tours and then took our train back to Paris.