Loire Valley
France

The elegant château and town of Saumur in the Loire Valley, France
Photo © Jean-Daniel Sudres

France Travel Guide | France Map | Loire Valley Maps | Loire Valley Pictures

The entire Loire Valley, known by PR people as 'The Garden of France' is a World Heritage site and contains a staggering number of France's most elegant castles, otherwise known as châteaux.

Here are just a handful of the highlights in this playground for French royalty since the 15th century:

Château de Chambord

- Château de Chambord, built by King François I and completed in 1534, looks like the largest castle of its era but is actually a mere [426 room] hunting lodge with a rooftop modelled on the skyline of Constantinople [Istanbul].

A small portion of Château de Villandry's extensive and complex Ornamental Gardens, the finest formal gardens in the Loire Valley.

- Château de Villandry is an elegant Renaissance building with modest interior attractions but exceptional formal gardens. Garden-lovers should also visit the zany Chaumont-sur-Loire International Garden Festival from May to October.

Château d'Amboise and the Loire River
Photo © Manfred Heyde

- Magnificently located Château d'Amboise on a rocky spur over the Loire River has been the home of scheming counts and kings since the 11th century but has an uninspiring interior and dull gardens.
Leonardo da Vinci died in Amboise town at the Château de Clos Lucé.

Château Chenonceau and the River Cher
Photo © Wladyslaw Sojka

- Château Chenonceau is the finest castle in the central Loire with a beautiful building spanning the River Cher. Finished in 1534, Chenonceau is romance par excellence, perhaps because most of the owners were female.

The sound and light show is particularly effective at demonstrating the castle's elegant design and describing its long and turbulent history, from the time when it was owned by Queen Catherine de Medici to its part in the French Resistance movement during World War II. At that time the north side of the castle was in occupied territory but the south was in the free zone so resistance fighters used the chateau to travel freely from side to side.
The sound and light show only operates during July and August at 10.15pm.

Guided tours are a good alternative to learning more about this fascinating building.

Cycling is a brilliant way to get around the Loire Valley as it's extremely flat and has a new network of about 800kms of dedicated cycle tracks. Loire Cycling Pictures.

Organised two or three day guided Château tours are available from Paris.

Otherwise, some charming riverside towns such as Blois, Amboise and Chinon are ideal exploration bases for independent travellers, or the larger but still charming towns of Tours, Angers, Orléans can be convenient.
Many of the chateaux offer pricey rooms to tourists, or in some cases entire castles are for rent.