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The Loire, France
After a surprisingly easy but long train ride via first class trains, punctuated by our first experience of the Metro, we dragged our luggage down the cobbled streets of Amboise, found a room at La Brèche Hotel, and then headed into town for something cool to drink under an umbrella on the town's central "square" -- nothing in Amboise is quite square. | ||
 Amboise town center |
The village of Amboise grew up around the ancestral home of the wealthy family who built the château and cheekily called themselves d'Amboise. The pretense of defense is thin here and at most Loire castles, but the trappings of military might are still present. That's one of two towers with spiral ramps for riding horses up and down from town to castle on the left.
We chose Amboise because it was small and, we were told, unspoiled by tourists. The Loire runs right through the middle of town, with the train station and our hotel on one side, and the castle and most of the "sights" on the other. |
Somewhat frazzled by travel and the heat of the day, we returned to La Brèche for the obligatory and quite adequate dinner, a bottle of wine, and thankfully, bed.
The next day promised to be another hot one, so while Chad found the internet café we took the history walk around the castle early. |
 Page's house below the castle |
 fancy brickwork on an old house front |
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Château Amboise is built on a limestone outcropping above the Loire, and this geology allows for careful tunneling of caves, warehouses, and even houses that have existed for centuries but are still in use. Given the heat of the region's summers, living in a cave makes a lot of sense. The fronts of the troglodyte houses are inevitably brightly decorated with flower boxes or open onto well-kept gardens, and the windows are large compared to the freestanding houses roundabout that have windows, usually, on two sides, or twice as many as the trog houses. Tourists (including this one) are captivated by these present-day cave dwellings. This one boasts two satellite "sky-TV" receivers. I also like the double-barreled chimney coming out of the rock well up the cliff. I kept thinking that Malcolm Wells, the well-known architect of underground homes, would approve of these dwellings. You sure wouldn't have to worry about anyone sneaking in the back door! |
 a "trog house" |
 The Clos Lucé's inner facade |
Leonardo da Vinci lived the last six years of his life here, and supposedly his remains are in the chapel at Chateau Amboise. King Henri II invited him to live at Clos Lucé, a modest country home belonging to the king. In an otherwise crowded town, Clos Lucé is a stately and lovingly detailed building favored with large and lovely gardens and a view to the castle half a mile away. Leonard (as the French stubbornly call him) was well past his artistic years at this time, recognized as a genius in many fields, but principally known for his war machines and defensive castle designs.
Clos Lucé has become a shrine for Leonardo, and is decorated with furniture "of his period" and a collection of models of his inventions. |
Surrounded by what must then have been even more beautiful than now, I wondered how the aging master -- he didn't live a long life at all, and during the years in Amboise he was in decline -- could have kept so focussed on the arts of seige, defense, hostility, and domination. But they were his meal ticket, I suppose.
Other distinguished guests lived in this house -- a widowed queen, a retired but once prominent courtesan -- before and after Leonard, but his hosts did much to make him comfortable, and some of what they did, including a small Mediterranean garden, survives. The towers of the Amboise Château can be seen in the distance. |
 Clos Lucé's Mediterranean garden & Crêperie |
 "The room where Leonard died" |
While you and I might celebrate this as the bedroom where Leonardo slept after hatching some of his most far-seeing and lasting ideas in the workshop, that would not be very French. The guide explains this small bedchamber as "the room where Leonard died." Like much of the furniture adorning these historic places, there is no connection between the personages and the actual objects. The picture above is the view out the bedroom window. |
"To the ambitous, who are not content with the boons of life nor the beauty of the world, chastisement is imposed that they not understand life and remain insensible to the usefulness and the beauty of the universe."
-- attributed to Leonardo da Vinci |
 one of Leonardo's sayings |
 brace on the stair to Leonard's rooms |
Not much is known about Leonard's work during the last six years of his life, but there are bits of otherwise inexplicable genius all over this part of the Loire. Did he design this stair brace to take the spring out of the descent and preserve the stairway? Every wood-to-wood connection works to make the connection strong and long-lasting. |
Medieval kitchens here and in other buildings of the time hum with life and at the same time make us wonder at the inconveniences suffered by those who worked in them. All the cooking took place in the large open fireplace; sides of meat hung alongside garlic and herbs from the ceiling beams. The room was undoubtedly cozy and warm in winter, and likely unbearable in summer. Luckily, there was no fire blazing when we visited. |
 "Leonard's kitchen" |
 Leonardo's workroom | Leonardo's workroom is now used to display a collection of models made from drawings in the notebooks that Leonardo kept. Besides these models and the calligraphic sayings, not much of Leonardo's is here. To us, that didn't matter; it was enough to be here where Leonardo lived and worked in his last days. In this picture you see a catapult, a seige cannon, and the world's first tank. |
Having circumnavigated the castle, it was time to go in, and the next day that's what we did. Up a long ramp, through a gate, an about-face, and then we were in the keep. This castle was never used defensively.
From below the chapel, in the town, it's clearly still part of a fortress, or at least not a part of the town. This separation of nobility (above) and townspeople (below) doesn't appeal to USers, but was obviously the accepted way, enforced by the stones that shaped the town's walls.
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 Amboise Château from across the keep
Once the buildings of this château surrounded the keep, but a recent tenant (in the late 19th Century) realized that most of the buildings were not maintainable, had them pulled down, and used the stones to freshen up the remaining buildings.
He preserved the most historic rooms and a little gem of a chapel. The stone- and glass work is superlative, and amazingly well-preserved.
In a time when not many folks read, the carvings of a facade or lintel served a didactic purpose. Even to those of us who read, a story in stone like this one needs a narrator, but apparently (according to a guide I listened to for awhile) the narration is lost. Every day, hundreds of devout folks stand around and scratch their heads and puzzle over who these folks are and what are they doing. |
The furnishings of the château, although probably not authentic in the sense that d'Amboise bottoms may never have graced these chairs, nevertheless give a good impression of how grand this place must have been when occupied by France's rich and powerful. Here and in other châteaux, the period furniture, and the effort made to assemble it with some degree of verisimilitude, does great credit to the present owners -- here, it's the Count of Paris, who oversees France's answer to Britain's National Trust. |
 carved chair back |
 East (morning) wing of the château | The wing of the château paralleling the Loire was given over to military operations -- toll taking, the source of d'Amboise wealth, as they controlled the best crossings in the region. The living space was in the east wing. Now it's a museum of fine period furniture, and no one lives here. |
While trying to understand how these 16th and 17th Century "trophy homes" came to dot the cliffs and gracious vistas all along the Loire and its tributaries so plentifully -- more châteaux will be found in succeeding pages -- it dazzles me to consider the concentration of wealth, and the apparently happy complicity of the commonfolk who built the castles, kept them running, and submitted to the taxation and other forms of exploitation that must have necessary for such magnificent homes to be built. What fun it must have been (for the rich) to play dress-up here in this comfortable setting, well provided with the fruits of a generous terrain! For this idyll to have lasted so long -- right up to the French Revolution -- the peasants must have been pretty content ... or could it be they just didn't know any other way?
Is it possible the same could be true for us? |
 gargoyles on the north horse tower |
 dancing below the castle |
Another way of asking the same question, I suppose, is "what has been lost by our global pretense of eliminating the nobility?" As we were told at Sarum, workers in the service of a lord were guaranteed a decent livelihood. If heartless and deathless multinational corporations have replaced the feudal system, as it seems here and in the rest of the developed world, has the lot of the commonfolk suffered? |
The foods of France are rich and beautiful at this time of year, but seldom served as we like them most, uncooked and standing on their own merit. We enjoyed going to the market and wandering amongst the stalls, finding the best nectarines, radishes, and olives. The market was crowded with housewives and buyers for nearby restaurants. The spirit of buyers and sellers alike was festive, companionable, patient, and welcoming -- the most inclusive of our experiences so far in France. This highlighted for us how easy it is for travelers to isolate themselves, or be isolated, from the country they mean to visit. |
 lunch from the weekly street market |
 birthday rose from Chad
photo credit: Chad Abramson | During our stay in Amboise, we celebrated Rochelle's birthday with a calm day, flowers, and a special dessert from the willing staff of La Brèche. Back home in Fort Bragg, her teaching colleagues had been in school for three days already.
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