The royal château complex at Blois

 
The Château de Blois is a complex made up of buildings
of three architectural styles. The two shots above show
the Louis XII wing of the château. It was built starting in 1499, at a time when
italianate buildings of Renaissance style were becoming fashionable,

but the Louis XII wing is basically a late Gothic structure.











On the right is the courtyard façade of the François 1er wing, on which construction started just a few years later in the early 16th century. The façade itself is italianate in style, but the protruding stair tower, which is also very ornate, is a standard feature of French Gothic architecture. The people bottom-left in the photo might give you an idea of the scale of the building.

The third wing of the château is a Classical-style building. It was built later than the two other wings, in the first half of the 17th century, and to my eye is a little stodgy instead of whimsical and sort of excentric.

King Louis XII chose the porcupine as his royal symbol. And on the right just above is another shot of king François 1er's salamander.

Time off...

...for good behavior, I hope. Anyway, I'mm having a busy morning. And my joints are aching. And Blogger isn't cooperating. So, until tomorrow. Ken

Heading home

Home is the Loir-et-Cher département, and it's biggest town is Blois. That's just 25 miles north of Saint-Aignan. The drive from Bellegarde to Blois takes about an hour. Blois, an old royal town, has one of the major Loire Valley châteaux. Here are some pictures I took on a visit to the Château de Blois in 2009 with CHM. Each is a wider view next to a closer view...

The man who took the name Louis XII was born in the château at Blois in 1462 and reigned over France from 1498 until 1515. He was known as le père du peuple. He had his own brick wing of the old château built starting in 1499 in, basically, gothic style.

King François Ier reigned from Blois from 1515 to 1547, the period known as the French Renaissance. He in turn had his own wing added to the château at Blois, with the spiral stone staircase you see in the two photos just above.

François Ier's royal symbol was the salamander, an animal that was believed to have magical powers and be able to live through fires and other catastrophes.

Bellegarde in pictures

One of king Louis XIV's famous mistresses, known as Madame de Montespan, spent a lot of time at Bellegarde over the course of the 17th century. Her full name was Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart de Mortemart and she was a "favorite" of the king. She had seven children by him. Another of her children, a son named Louis-Antoine de Pardaillan de Gondrin, served as an officer in the Sun King's army for a while, but he was eventually disgraced for making a strategic mistake in a battle and was removed from service. He owned the Château de Bellegarde, but I'm not sure how he acquired it. During his years as the lord of Bellegarde, he had a lot of out-buildings built around the château, turning it into a big complex. Thanks to the Michelin Green Guide for that information.

Le Château de Bellegarde

From Sully-sur-Loire, it's about a 30 minute drive north to the town of Bellegarde and its château, which was built starting in the 14th century and re-built in the 15th. Bellegarde is a place I liked to drive through and it was a good rest stop when we used to drive to Paris, as I wrote back then, at the drop of a hat. Bellegarde is about two hours northeast of Saint-Aignan and Paris is about two hours north of Bellegarde.

The moat around the château at Bellegard is a small lake.

Like Sully, Bellegarde offers nice moat relections...

Sully encore

I think I've been to Sully-sur-Loire only two times. Once was with CHM in 2006. We had seen two or three other châteaux and a couple of churches earlier that day. The photo below with pink flowers in a pot is one I took in 2006, and the last photo in yesterday's post is one I took that day in 2006 too.

Most of these photos of Sully are ones I took in late May 2015. I was on my way to Paris to get CHM and and go off on an adventure in the southern part of Normandy. I stopped in Sully because I had a good memory of it and I wanted to take a few more photo. If I'm to believe the timestamps on the photos, I took all of them in about 10 minutes' time on that May morning.

I read two things about Sully-sur-Loire this morning that interested me. First, Joan of Arc was held there against her will for a few weeks in the year 1430. The owner of the château at the time didn't like or trust her. I also read that there was a big fire in the château de Sully in early 1918. Several wings that had been added to it in the early 1700s were destroyed, but the parts of it that dated back to the 1300s and 1400s were not damaged.

Sully-sur-Loire et ses charmes

Less than 15 miles downriver on the Loire from Gien, and about 25 miles upriver from the city of Orléans, stands what the Signpost guidebook for the Loire Valley calls "an awesome 14th-century château, solidly rectangular, guarded by mighty towers and turrets, and cleverly 'moated' by the river Sange", which is a tributary of the much wider and longer Loire. The name of the town and château here is Sully-sur-Loire and a member of the Sully family (Maurice) was the bishop of Paris from the year 1160 until 1196 — it was he who came up with the idea of building the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral back then.

The famous writer/philosopher Voltaire spent long periods of time at the Château de Sully-sur-Loire in the late 1600s and early 1700s when another Sully, Maximilien de Béthune, a friend of Voltaire's who had been named the Duke of Sully, was serving as the finance minister of the French king Henri IV of "Paris is well worth a mass" and "a chicken in every pot" fame.

The Château de Sully has a donjon (castle keep) with a 600-year-old roof structure. The castle itself had nearly completely fallen into ruin at the end of the Second World War. The town of Sully, like Gien, had been 80% destroyed when bombed by the Germans and subsequently by Allied forces. The castle has been beautifully restored since those days.

The Michelin Guide Vert for the Châteaux de la Loire says that while this château is undoubtedly a fortress and a good example of military architecture, what give it its charm is les reflets du soleil sur ses vieilles pierres, l'ombre et le murmure des grands arbres sur ses douves miroitantes, son petit pont, ses toits coiffés d'ardoises, et enfin, son doux ciel de Loire.

Gien

The town named Gien on the Loire river east of Orléans, says the Cadogan guidebook, was "bombed to smithereens in the Second World War, by the Germans in 1940 and by the Allies in 1944. Eighty per cent destroyed, the town was harmoniously restored after the conflict. The splendid hump-backed stone bridge was patched up. Riverside façades were recreated using traditional brick patternings of trellises and chevrons." Cadogan adds: "Meanwhile, by a stroke of good fortune, the Château de Gien up the hill escaped the bombs."

The Signpost guide for the Loire Valley says that "curiously, the town's noble château is built mainly of bricks, which the ordinary houses and cottages all around are built mainly of handsome stone." Gien is about 40 miles east of La Ferté-Saint-Aubin, which I posted about yesterday.

The château at Gien was not built but re-built in the toward the end of the 15th century, replacing fortifications that dated back to the 9th century.

The first stone bridge in Gien was spanning the Loire in 1246, according the Wikipédia. It was replaced by today's bridge in the 18th century.

The town of Gien has long been famous for the blue and yellow faïence (glazed earthenware) made there and for its hunting museum. Of that, the Signpost guide says: "If hunting upsets you, don't go in — the museum looks lovingly at the whole process of chasing and killing animals and birds, how it has inspired, entertained, and fed people..."

La Ferté-Saint-Aubin

The Cadogan guidebook for the Loire Valley describes the château at La Ferté-Saint-Aubin, 20 miles due south of Orléans, as "one of the most appealing in the region, although it is run down." It is located about a 30-minute drive north of La Ferté-Imbault

The Michelin Guide Vert says that La Ferté-Saint-Aubin, pop. 6,000 or so, is the site of un superbe château classique [qui] dresse ses façades de brique rose parmi les feuillages.

The river that feeds water into the moat is the Cosson, which flows on west toward Chambord.

The Cadogan Loire guidebook says that visitors can wander around in the rooms on the top two floors of the château unaccompanied. The musty rooms are in a bad state of repair, but are filled with sometimes amusing bric-a-brac. There are also guided tours of the better-preserved apartments on the ground floor, and there's a "modest little cookery cooking demonstration" down in the basement-level kitchen included. I wonder if any of that is still true today...

La Ferté-Imbault

The Château de la Ferté-Imbault is just about half and hour's drive east of The Château du Moulin. Between the two is the town of Romorantin-Lanthenay (known locally as "Romo"). It doesn't appear in any of my guidebooks, though it is worth a visit. The population of the village is about one thousand.

A château-fort was built on this site starting in the year 980. During the 100 Years' War between the English and the French in the 14th and 15th centuries, that building was destroyed, as was the neighboring village. A new château was built during the Renaissance in the 16th century. That château was destroyed by fire in 1562, during the French Wars of Religion between Catholics and Protestants. La Ferté-Imbault was re-built in the early 17th century.

The Château de la Ferté-Imbault is the largest brick château in the Sologne region of France.

I remember having dinner at the restaurant pictured above. In French the word lard means bacon or pork belly. What we call lard (rendered pork fat) is known as saindoux in France. The expression tête de lard is an insult used to describe a person who is ignorant and obstinate.