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Diane's Châteaux In the 16th and 17th Century France, the "coast" of the Loire river was Carmel, Mendocino, Scarsdale, Shaker Heights, and the Main Line all rolled into one. Anyone who was anyone pauperized himself (or his serfs) to build a little second châteaux here. Some of these edifices are a mere ten rooms, while some run into the hundreds. These folks built for the ages, and most of their monuments are still standing and in use today.

The Château de Chenonceau from the Cher
The Bohier wing and Diane's gardens	The magnificent château at Chenonceau started as a modest manor and communal mill built on piers right across the gentle Cher, a tributary of the Loire, by the Marques family, but was sold in ruins to the king's tax collector Bohier in 1499. After a nasty fight for control with a Marques heiress, he acquired unquestioned control in 1512, and set about building. A busy man, Bohier left his wife, Catherine Briçonnet, to attend to the details of planning and construction, and many innovative features such as straight wide stairs and bright large kitchens were introduced by this wise lady. The first phase of construction, the keep and wing beside the river Cher, were completed in 1521, but Bohier and his Catherine didn't have much time to enjoy it: he died in 1524 and she in 1526. A few years later the tax collector's accounts were examined and found, ahem, a little short, and in 1535 the Bohier heir gave up the castle to the king, François I, who used it as a hunting lodge. François' son, who would become Henri II, wasn't especially interested in that kind of hunting, and in view of the debts he intended to incur during his reign, married another Catherine, a Medici, a plain but wealthy woman. Unfortunately for Catherine, his heart belonged to a captivatingly beautiful older woman.
Diane de Poitiers was, by all accounts, a kind, decent, and radiantly attractive woman twenty years older than Henri. Wrote a contemporary, "She had very white skin and wore no make up on her face." Upon his assumption of the throne, Henri gave Chenonceau to Diane, endowed her with the proceeds from the royal tax on bells, and she set about developing it as a suitable nest for herself and her lover, the king. Rabelais wrote, "The king has hung all the bells of the kingdom around the neck of his mare." She built a new wing, the château's most remarkable feature, consisting of two grand galleries, on the remains of the mill's pilings in the river, continuing the bridge right across so that she and the king could walk out the back door and into the private forest on the far side of the Cher. She also built a magnificent formal garden on the entry side north of the keep.	Diane de Poitiers

a forbidding phalanx of tourists

We first arrived at Chenonceau, on a hot, sticky Thursday afternoon, and we barely made it inside the crowded front door before being repulsed by the shutter-snapping, brochure reading, toe-treading throng. With so much humanity around, we didn't feel any chance of catching a sense of either Catherine or the other queens and great ladies who lived here over the centuries. We resolved to come back on a quieter day, and that we did. When we returned early on Sunday, it was calm and a tenth as populated -- we could actually see the walls! Beyond the hype and without the mobs, we found an astonishingly pleasant, if grandiose, home.

The hearth is the heart of a home, and here, in one of the huge pillars beneath the great rooms, we found a bakery, kitchen, and pantry that used the cooling effect of the Cher, and its navigability, to the advantage of the château's workers and noble inhabitants. Here too we found narrow underhalls and stairs that would have been impassible with Thursday's throng.

a painted ceiling in "Diane's room"	The great rooms are furnished with period pieces, and in many the remains of original majolica floor tiles and papered and painted walls can still be appreciated. The greatest craftsmen were brought from all over Europe to decorate this castle, and even the remains are impressive.
Imagine this room decorated for a party. Catherine is here with her king Henri, and the best of French society have come over from their own châteaux scattered within an easy afternoon's carriage ride. The jewels of France's greatest age glitter with reflections of flickering candles -- we see the scene through Hollywood's lens, but in the middle of the 16th Century, here, it was very real and brilliant.	the lower gallery
	It was just as real 350 years later when this same room was a hospital during "the Great War" when the allied front lines were only a few miles to the east. The plaque and flowered wreath on the right commemorate the "injured heroes" who were nursed here. As you might expect, this house built by women is full of soft, gracious, and homely touches that make it infinitely more livable than an earlier military château like Amboise.
Now imagine yourself and a companion here, in an alcove just off the kitchen on a grey day, sitting in quiet companionship and peeling potatoes or apples, watching the Cher flow beyond the window and listening with just half an ear to the sounds coming from the masters upstairs preparing for lunch. Unexpectedly, the kitchen precincts of this château, while below the level of the main floor, are still flooded with light and airy by castle standards. Remember that natural light through windows such as this was the only really economical illumination available to the hired help -- what a testimony to peace it is that windows so near the ground could be so generous!

Diane's garden To my western eye, the detailing and the permanece of these buildings is remarkable. Here, in a stairway from the upper, somewhat less public rooms to the main floor, the stonework and finishing is correct and well-conceived to within a millimeter of perfection. Consider the way we build today, and then imagine with me the dedication to quality and the perspective on time that it takes to build like this. Gabrielle d'Estrées' bedroom

Visiting in late August, it's an exercise to imagine what this place would be like right through the seasons. It seems to be a summer château, a sometime residence for a class of people who make their homes elsewhere during most of the year. Over the years, each of the château's many bedrooms has been home to someone famous, and the present day keepers (Chenonceau is in private hands) have named the rooms after these worthies. Another favorite of a king, Henri IV, is supposed to have slept here.

The audacious act of building a house above a river allows for some magical prospects, both from inside the home and from outside on the river where we rowed.

a 17th Century inlaid cabinet By the time we had finished exploring the château, the crowds had begun to choke the narrow hallways and below-stairs area -- I never was able to get a decent picture of the kitchen with its huge black range that must have had the castle built around it. Despite the splendour of the rooms and furnishings above stairs, I found myself appreciating the humbler parts of the house more. For all its polish, could anyone from any age sit comfortably on this chair?

The workmanship on the furnishings matches that of the building. This must have been a time of incomprehensible wealth, when the most gifted craftsmen could afford to spend years on a single chest, wall decoration, or chair.

As the phalanx reassembled in the keep to resume its daily assault on Chenonceau's peace, we were grateful to have had a few relatively uncrowded hours to walk through the rooms listening for echoes and looking for shadows of the place's builders and original inhabitants. But before you go, let me finish the story of Diane of Poitiers.

The village and château at Chaumont-sur-Loire

Although she was two decades older than Henri, Diane outlived him, and it was her sorrowful duty to face his embittered wife, Catherine d' Medici, who was regent upon the king's demise. The local stories may exaggerate Catherine's antipathy, but they all agree that one of Catherine's first acts as regent was to acquire the d'Amboise's drafty old castle at Chaumont, a few miles upstream from Amboise on the Loire, evict Diane from her comfortable home at Chenonceau, and send her there. Accounts differ; some say Diane never set foot within Chaumont but went directly into retirement, and others say she lived at Chaumont for weeks or months before retiring to a much smaller château at Anet, where she died seven years later. Catherine built a new garden at Chenonceau, completed the galleries over the Loire, and held a string of magnificent feasts.

our guide took this picture

the branding of Chaumont

Chaumont's present-day manifestation, its third, was brought about by Pierre d'Amboise's seventeenth son Charles -- things must have been getting crowded down-river. The d'Amboise family was successful, acquisitive, and not afraid to make their points: Chaumont means "hot mountain" (as can be seen in the rebus on the castle) and implies "don't touch our mountain!"

Chaumont's history, and indeed the château, is darker and less interesting than Chenonceau. Parts are still not electrified; the last owners (it is now in the hands of the state) chose to build anew behind the magnificent stables rather than trying to modernize this old pile. Precisely because the castle was unlivable, some of its floors and built-in furnishings are in better repair than at the well-used Chenonceau.

Majolica floor tiles

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