Monuments in Romo

Here's the story about Romo. Five hundred years ago the new French king, François 1er had a plan to have a royal palace built there. He had brought Leonardo da Vinci from Italy to live here in the Loire Valley, in Amboise. Leonardo started drawing up plans for the new royal residence. François loved the area because it's the center of an expansive forested area called La Sologne, and he loved hunting.

The first construction work had started in Romo when Leonardo, an old man then, died in 1519. Parts of the new palace had been built. Work stopped. There was an epidemic of plague in the region. François started work on Chambord, which was to be his new hunting lodge and his display to all of Europe that he was wealthy and powerful. Chambord was closer to Blois, where François lived and reigned.

During World War I, an big American military supply base was established a few miles south of Romo in the town of Gièvres. In World War II Romo was taken over by German forces. It was bombarded and re-taken in 1944 by Allied forces only in 1944. The nearby Cher river was the dividing line between occupied France and free France.

Romo became something of a backwater. The Sologne was a territory of forests and ponds and rivers. Malaria was pretty common in the area. Over the centuries, most of the palace that had been built was torn down. In the 19th century, the land around Romo was improved, drained, and made more liveable. And in the 20th century the town blossomed. It's now one of the three biggest towns in the Loir-et-Cher département, after Blois and before Vendôme. The Sologne is basically agricultural, with strawberries and asparagus as two of its main crops.