To reach Tours from Amboise one only has to follow the road westward on either bank of the river, but by doing so one misses the fascinating castle of Chenonceaux, which lies a few miles to the south-east.
The best road to take is the one going due south through the forest of Amboise towards Bléré, and at the first important cross-road (see map) one goes to the left parallel with the River Cher.
Just before reaching the village of Chenonceaux a turning to the right leads across the railway to the entrance-gates of the château of
CHENONCEAUX
Admission is given every day except when the family is in residence, when the public can enter on Sundays and Thursdays only between 2 and 4. The charge is 1 franc for each person.
An avenue leads down to a formal garden enclosed by low walls and brilliant with flowers, which make a fitting foreground to this castle of pleasant memories, for there are no records or traditions of any treachery or murder here; instead, one finds accounts of brilliant fêtes and receptions, when the picturesque little château must have been a pageant of colour and beauty.
An isolated tower on the right of the garden belongs to an earlier castle than that which exists now, and its walls have the mellowed tones which restoration has stolen from the beautiful building just beyond.
The approach is by a bridge, for the whole of the castle stands in the River Cher on the site of a mill owned by the predecessors of the builder. Although erected in the sixteenth century, there are two drawbridges which isolate the castle from the banks, but its peaceful story does not suggest that they were ever needed.
The elaborately ornamented roofs, the circular corner turrets, and the galleried bridge reflected in patches in the eddying water, make a most attractive picture, and one feels surprise that no one has imitated such an idea.
It was in 1515 that Thomas Bohier is supposed to have begun the castle. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer of Normandy, and spent large sums of money on the building. The style was not altogether of the Renaissance, as one may see from the Gothic chapel he built. In 1524 he died in Italy, the country from whence he had drawn his ideas for his exquisite house in the Cher, which was still unfinished. Antoine, his eldest son, found himself in such a predicament through his father’s methods of finance that in 1535 he sold Chenonceaux to François I.