Chateaux to stay - continued

Touraine's star chateaux...
Nine great Touraine castles are familiar names to virtually every French person. Touraine's star châteaux are Chenonceau , Amboise , Azay-le-Rideau , Chinon , the Clos-Lucé , Langeais , Loches , Villandry and Ussé .

Chenonceau's castle includes perhaps the most beautiful and famous bridge in France, across the Cher river. Villandry boasts the most staggering kitchen gardens you're ever likely to see, vegetable planting transformed into art. The artist Leonardo da Vinci was donated the Château du Clos-Lucé when he came to work for King François I. Ussé claims to be the castle which inspired that classic fairytale, Sleeping Beauty, written by the 17th-century Frenchman Charles Perrault, while Azay-le-Rideau nearby narcissistically admires itself in its lake by the Indre.


Amboise, Chinon, Langeais and Loches, all major royal castles, are made of sterner stuff, being citadels as much as castles, dominating their respective towns with their might. Amboise , still in royal French hands, is where Leonardo da Vinci met with King François I. Chinon was a favourite Plantagenet halt, as we've said, while later on Joan of Arc memorably dropped in to convince the future King Charles VII that she was the woman to help him boot the English out of France and get him crowned in Reims. Langeais' massive rounded towers may intimidate the little town cowering below, but inside, the chambers are made cheerful by the warmest collection of tapestries.

Loches is perhaps the mightiest citadel of the lot, with its two châteaux in one, the first frightening early medieval, with a vast soaring keep, the second charmingly restored late Gothic. Close to all nine of these castles you'll find good places to stay and to eat, if you want to be just on the châteaux's doorsteps to visit them. Several of these major châteaux, notably Amboise , Azay-le-Rideau , Chenonceau , Chinon and Loches , stage major cultural events and/or summer sons-et-lumières, the latter night-time entertainments, usually with a theatrical production in historical costume and special lighting effects or fireworks.