The Ladies of Touraine Route

Agnès Sorel, Diane de Poitiers and Gabrielle d'Estrée were the mistresses of the greatest French Kings and their political role was as essential as the splendour they had around them which greatly contributed to the artistic influence of the Kingdom. Their history met with the history of Touraine.
Agnès Sorel was twenty when she met King Charles VII who was forty. She was the daughter of an ordinary mercenary of the King but it is said that she had extraordinary beauty. She was the first official favourite of a King of France. Charles VII gave her the Château de Loches as her residence and soon her presence illuminated the King's court in Chinon. She had a very fortunate influence on the King; she encouraged him to put the Kingdom on its feet again and to continue the war against the English. But more than anything, she cured him from depression while Queen Marie of Anjou fretted in her castle! Agnès gave birth to three girls but her taste for splendour weighed a lot in the small budget of the Kingdom which brought her many enemies. Pregnant for the fourth time, she joined Charles VII anyway on campaign in Jumièges. There, she got sick and died on the 9th of February 1450. She was only 28 years old. The Dauphin, the future Louis XI, was suspected of having poisoned her as he couldn't forgive her her influence.

Diane de Poitiers was King Henry II's favourite. The king who was madly in love, offered her the Château de Chenonceau and had the Château d'Anet built for her. Even when she was very old, she still had a body and intellectual vigour which used to surprise people around her. She was what one could call a strong woman. She took state decisions, negotiated with the Protestants, she illicitly traded Spanish prisoners, distributed magistracy and dignities and, to the great humiliation of the Queen, she took care of the Royal children's education. Her character was so strong that only a few artists didn't draw her portrait. After Henry II's death, Diane had to give the castle back to Catherine de Medici, who wanted revenge, and retired to her Château d'Anet where she died in 1566.

Gabrielle d'Estrée was the great love of King Henry IV, the Great. For seven years, she had the role of a wife and gave the King the first three children he acknowledged. He intended to marry her but she died: poisoning? bad luck? we will probably never know. Her family on her mother's side was from Touraine and the women had a terrible reputation: the men who approached them would all fall madly in love! Marie Babou, wife of Philibert and called "la Belle babou" (Beautiful Babou) once said that she had known, in the biblical sense of the word, the hereditary enemies François I and Charles V! Today, the Château de la Bourdaisière in Montlouis-sur-Loire is a hotel but another castle retains the memory of Gabrielle and Henry; the Château de la Mézière in Lunay as the King stayed there with his favourite.

The castles of the Loir Valley

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Wine route: Bourgueil and Chinon

According to the French novelist François Rabelais, drunkenness helps perceive the taste of eternity… One cannot imagine a trip through the Val de Loire without crossing the vineyards. In this garden of France bathed in a light of balance and harmony, the river Loire rules: Bourgueil on the Right Bank, Chinon on the left.

The area of Bourgueil and of Saint-Nicolas covers about 2,100 hectares of vineyards. The red wines depend on the soil: those on the gravel soil are supple and fruity, those on the tufa-stone soil are full-bodied and tannic.
The Benedictine abbey of Bourgueil was one of the wealthiest of Anjou. The storerooms and large attics are in an elegant building which has a gable flanked by two turrets topped with a light-sided spire and are the oldest parts as they date back to the 13th and 14th Centuries. The other buildings were erected during the 18th Century. The wine growing village of Restigné has a very interesting church as its facade has a diamond-shaped bond and its South portal, a sculpted lintel showing uncanny creatures and Daniel in the lion's den. Surrounded by a moat, the Château des Réaux is charming. Finally, in Chouzé-sur-Loire, the small 15th century mansion still stands. This is where Marie d'Harcourt, wife of Dunois, the famous Bastard of Orleans died.

To travel from Bourgueil to Chinon, go South and cross the Loire in Port-Boulet. The soil is divided into three areas. The first one, furthest West, is a strip of land and sand taken from the water, stuck between the rivers Loire and Vienne. It gives more supple wines, another form of elegance than the usual Chinons of the deep soil and of the hillsides. You may lose yourself in the sand and gravel but don't worry, the church towers of Beaumont and Savigny-en-Véron are there to lead you so that you can continue to discover and then go back East. In Cravant, the church is a rare specimen of Carolingian art dating back to the 10th century. The route passes through Ligré and finally arrives in Chinon with its proud ramparts of the castle overlooking the river Vienne.

The Chinon wines

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Meeting with the writers

Touraine has been the birthplace of some of the greatest French writers… Could it be the climate or the refined art of living of that region that are at the origin of such various talents? In any case, the fact is that François Rabelais, Pierre de Ronsard, René Descartes, Honoré de Balzac, Alfred de Vigny, Georges Courteline… are all from Touraine.

The land of Rabelais is Chinon, a land of abundance on which the witty eloquence and the vivid imagination of the humanist gave birth to Gargantua. "La Devinière", his birthplace in Seuilly at five kilometres from Chinon is now a museum in which, behind the austere facade, opens the Grande Salle (Large Room) where the chimney of the King Grangousier (Gargantua's father) thrones. The stone stairs lead to the author's parents' room in which the distaff bed is a genuine antique.

The world of the poet Pierre de Ronsard is full of delicacy. The author of "Mignonne, allons voir si la rose" (the most famous of his poems learnt by every French pupil) was born in the mansion of La Possonnières in Couture-sur-Loir. He spent most of his youth as a page to various Royal princesses. His ambition was to be a soldier but as he precociously suffered deafness, he opted for the orders. In 1560, he was declared poet of the court, council and chaplain of the King and received, in 1565, the responsibility of the priory of Saint-Cosme in La Riche, a peaceful place where he lived until the end of his life.

René Descartes was born in La Haye in 1596. The village was later given his name. His grandmother and his nurse brought him up in a plain house on a large street today transformed into a museum which pays tribute to the child of the land whose rationalist doctrine went around the world.

Honoré de Balzac was born in Tours in 1799 in the rue de l'Armée Italienne that has today disappeared. He was in boarding school in Vendôme from the age of eight and only kept money relations with his family. In 1830, he lived with Madame de Berny at La Grenadière in Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire, near Tours. He situated the house of Lady Dudley there in his novel "le Lys dans la Vallée". But it was in the Château de Saché that the great novelist found his inspiration from 1823 to 1837.

"I was born in Loches, a lovely little town of Touraine…" wrote Alfred de Vigny. His family, noblemen ruined by the French Revolution, were very much linked to the history of the town since the Renaissance but the future poet left it very early.

And last but not least, the French humorist Georges Courteline, author of many satiric comedies, was also born in Tours.

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Troglodytes in Anjou

Between Montsoreau and Saumur, the River Loire lazily flows between the golden sandbanks. It dug its bed in the soft tufa-stone soil. There, visitors can discover one of the most unusual richnesses of the region: the troglodytes. In those strange villages, the buried streets wind, intertwine and are superposed over each other. These villages are always accompanied by farms, pigeon houses, mills, ovens and wells.

One thousand kilometres of underground passages make up one of the largest troglodyte groups in Europe. Visitors can eat in the large rooms converted into restaurants; the oldest ones were dug during the 12th century! Visitors can also sleep in the sojourn centre of Doué-la-Fontaine built in shell-marl, a crumbly white stone.

This village and its surroundings are situated in a chalky plateau dug on all parts by the peasants who lived there during the Middle Ages or by the Protestants who hid during the religious wars. Invisible from the streets, these settlements are built under the ground and are organised around a pit forming an interior yard. At 6 kilometres from Doué, in the village of Louresse-Rochemenier, you can visit two old farms that were unfortunately abandoned like many others during the 1930s.
For some years now, the troglodyte houses are being rebuilt and many are even lived in.

On the banks of the River Loire, the villages are not hidden but, on the contrary, are built on the hillsides and the facades of the houses overlook the river. On the cliff of Turquant, the Grande Vignolle is a unique example of a troglodyte seigniorial home and in Souzay, don't miss the magnificent and surprising castle in which Queen Marguerite of Anjou is said to have passed away.
The hamlet of La Fosse, the sculpted cave of Dénezé-sous-Doué, the silkworm breeding in Coudray-Macouard, the mushroom bed "Le Saut au Loups", the visual contemporary arts centre in Saint-Georges-des-Sept-Voies and the wine caves of Turquant are as many stops in this surprising troglodyte route.

Rochemenier, troglodyte site of the Val de Loire.

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The Jacques Cœur route

The Jacques Cœur route goes through rare castles and ancient cities, within the midst of generous nature. From La Buissière in the Loiret to Culan to the South of the Cher, it includes many stops.

The man who gave his name to this circuit had intuition. In 15th century Europe, his power was so great that people called him the king without a crown. A man of action, of influence and of avant-garde, Jacques Cœur left an empire that was put to auction because he didn't have any heirs!

At the beginning of the 15th century, Joan of Arc talked King Charles VII into regaining his Kingdom and Jacques Cœur was the man who helped finance the reconquest. He was born in Bourges and had his castle built there. Tradesman, ambassador and extremely wealthy, he actively contributed to the economic reconstruction of the country.

The Jacques Cœur route winds its way through a verdant and serene countryside. Its stops are the Abbey of Noirlac, the Château de Boucard, Aubigny-sur-Nère, Saint-Amand-Monrond, Dun-sur-Auron, Argent-sur-Sauldre, La chapelle d'Angillon, Ainay-le-Vieil, Jussy-Champagne, Menetou-Salon,Gien, Meillant, Maupas, Culan, La Verrerie and Blancafort.

Circuits in the Berry and the Cher regions

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A walk in Rabelaisie

A pilgrimage to Rabelaisie must go through la Devinière. A league from Chinon, in the parish of Seuilly, the home of Antoine Rabelais saw the birth of the young François in 1494. The exuberant father of Gargantua grew vines in the area where it is said, he made "vin taffetas" (taffeta wine), a sweet and supple wine. You can visit Rabelais's bedroom there and a little museum of his life and work.

The Abbey of Seuilly-Coteaux was where the young François was brought up and where, in Gargantua, he located the abbey of friar John des Entommeures (of the funnels and gobbets), who, he wrote, was "a wide-mouthed, long-nosed, a fair dispatcher of morning prayers, unbridler of masses and runner over vigils" and who used his processional cross to chase the people of the village of Lerné who had invaded the close of the abbey.(trans. by Urquhart and Motteux, the Works of François Rabelais, ed. Abbey Library).

Lerné, a picturesque village on chalky soil, also belongs to Rabelais's stories: it was from that village that the bunsellers used to leave to go to the market of Chinon. A fight with the shepherds of Seuilly launched the burlesque war between Picrochole, King of Lerné and Grangousier, father of Gargantua and wise Prince of Seuilly.

The route then leads to the wine-making village of Cravant-les-Coteaux and then to the Château de Rigny-Ussé which inspired Charles Perrault with the fairy tale, Sleeping Beauty. It is a little wonder, with its towers that emerge from the woods of Chinon. This amazing castle was built during the 15th century and progressively went from fortress to pleasure residence.
The route leads you to Candes-Saint-Martin with its remarkable 12th and 13th century collegiate church. From the top of its terraced gardens, the eyes lose themselves in the intertwined tracks of the rivers Loire and Vienne.

Finally, on Alexandre Dumas's footsteps: the Château de Montsoreau built in 1455 kept a lot of its charm with its fortress-looking aspect overlooking the Loire side and its beautiful interior facade in Renaissance style.

Surroundings of Chinon

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The Clos-Lucé

In Clos-Lucé, you completely enter the prestigious history of the region. The mansion, made of pink brick and underlined with tufa-stone, was acquired by Charles VIII in 1490. It later lodged François I, his sister, Marguerite de Navarre and their mother, the Regent Louise de Savoie. In 1516, François I invited Leonardo da Vinci to Amboise and let him stay in Clos-Lucé. Da Vinci stayed there until he died at 67 years old, on the 2nd of May 1519.

Today, you can see the fabulous machines designed by Da Vinci: the first aeroplane, the first car and… the ancestor of the helicopter; they are all modelled with genuine materials and this, five centuries after having been imagined. Amazing! The great painter who left us beautiful Madonnas was also a visionary genius who was interested in mechanics, hydraulics, optics, civil, military and naval engineering, and aeronautics.

Leonardo da Vinci, painter and inventor.

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