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Chateau de Cheverny
Some families are lucky. The Hurault family of financiers and officials serving a succession of French kings has owned Cheverny for six centuries, with only a couple of short breaks. The entire castle...
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Vaux-le-Vicomte: Fouquet’s Rise and Fall
Louis XIV traveled to this newly-built chateau, Vaux-le-Vicomte, on August 17, 1661. The owner, Nicolas Fouquet, was throwing a spectacular blowout party for the Sun King. There was music, dancing,...
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Chateau d’Amboise
What if your job was to guard a strategic section of the important River Loire? And this was in medieval times when rival nobles considered themselves mini-monarchs with a duty to become maxi-monarchs...
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Leonardo and Francois I at Clos Luce
In 1516, King Francois I imported his very own personal resident genius from Italy to his home in Amboise. He installed Leonardo da Vinci in a fine mansion just down the road, Clos Luce. It was close...
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Chateau Gaillard in Amboise: A Smiling Monk and Oranges from Italy
There’s a new chateau in town, complementing the touristic big guns of Chateau d’Amboise and Leonardo da Vinci’s last home, Clos Luce. (It’s not to be confused with the medieval Chateau Gaillard in...
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Chateau de Fontainebleau, Favorite Digs of Napoleon Bonaparte
Of the many facades of Fontainebleau, the grand double stairway where the defeated Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte said goodby to his loyal troops is the most famous. But on my visit a few months ago, a...
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Azay-le-Rideau: Island Dreaminess and Bats in the Belfry
Once upon a time a beautiful chateau rose up on an island in the middle of the River Indre…well, not really. Actually the Chateau d’Azay-le-Rideau began as a 12th-century fortress built to protect the...
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Egeskov Castle: A Danish Midsummer Night’s Dream
This year I am in pretty-far-north Minnesota for Midsummer’s Eve, but I have to say that Minnesotans don’t celebrate the Longest Day of the Year with much panache. So I’m hearkening back to my...
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Downton Abbey Locations: Irresistible for a Fan
I managed to get to Highclere Castle, the “real” Downton Abbey, on a day it was closed to the general public. Now, I have no claim to fame and I was not invited to take tea with the current Countess,...
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Usse: A Sleeping Beauty of a Chateau
Reading history, I often wonder why anybody in their right mind really wanted to be King or Queen. Shakespeare had it right in “Henry IV, Part 2: “Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.” And...
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