The Loire Valley, Part I

If you miss watching Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, the Loire Valley is the place for you. There are 1,001 chateaux--many built over medieval fortresses--and they are a sparkling example of French architecture, artfully manicured gardens, and blatant one-upmanship. If you go with your children and you don't lose them inside the chateaux, you will lose them once they see the labyrinth signs and go running for the hedges. Don't worry. Depending on their age, they'll find their own way out, or they'll get to the center platform and scream for you in English which makes them easy to weed out from the others.

Due to rich hunting grounds, the Hundred Years War, the presence of French Kings, and the need for ministers, court, and various hangers-on to sleep near royalty, the Loire Valley hosted the "Who's Who Among the Upper French Crust" (this would be a hard crust, of course) for over two centuries. And you can almost hear a particularly annoying aristocrat say, "It's so tiresome to always have hummingbird tongue on hand. One never knows when the King will pop by." Now, depending upon who you are and how you got your money, the King popping by wouldn't necessarily be a good thing, as Gilles Bertholot found first hand.

Gilles Bertholot, the King's notary and secretary, acquired the Chateau of Azay-le-Rideau in 1510, and set-about redecorating it with funds his relative, the Superintendent of Finance, embezzled from the King. After this relative was executed, King Francois I popped by to compliment Berthelot on his fine house, and his meaning was clear. Berthelot fled, and the chateau was given to the King's buddy, Antoine Raffin, whose descendants lived there, presumably rent free, until the 18th Century.

So this got me thinking: you could save a lot of money living with your parents until you got married. Can you imagine how much money your entire family could save by living in the King's house for 200 years?

Here's a picture of what free housing looked like in 1537 (the Chateau of Azay-le-Rideau):

Francois I not only gave free housing to Antoine Raffin, but he also room and boarded Leonardo da Vinci in the Chateau du Clos Luce in Amboise, France. The only requirement for Leonardo was to have a daily conversation with the King and to sleep in a room with a communicating door to the King's sister (actually, the latter wasn't a requirement, but it was the reality we discovered during our tour). My husband says there's nothing to this. "Leonardo was far too old to carry on with the King's sister," he said. But I admit my eyebrows went up when I immediately didn't find a lock on either side of the door. It wasn't until he said, "Most historians agree that Leonardo was gay," that they went back down. And my next question was, "So, he had a view of Francois' Royal Chateau from his window AND the King sat next to his bed when he died?" If my husband didn't say, "STOP!" in words, his expression surely did.

In the basement are scale models of many of Leonardo's inventions and even more interesting for the kids were the full scale replicas of his swinging bridge, tank, paddle boat, repeating gun (pictured below), etc.

We visited for three hours, and we could have happily stayed for many hours longer had my friend's son not imploded somewhere along the tour (probably near the cat sleeping on da Vinci's death bed--he doesn't like cats). Since this was during the rare astrological aligning of the stars which ushered in good behavior from my son, I just looked with empathy upon his parents, thinking how sad it was that they just couldn't get along.

(Above and Below): The Chateau du Clos Luce

(Below): The room where da Vinci died. Note: House owner's cat sleeping on da Vinci's bed.

(Below): The view from da Vinci's room. The Royal Chateau is on the hill in the distance.

(Below): Full-scale models of da Vinci's repeating gun in the foreground, and rotating UFO-style tank in the background.

The Royal Chateau of Amboise's St. Hubert Chapel (pictured below) is said to house Leonardo da Vinci's body--though this is disputed. Only 1/5th of the original chateau survived after one of Napoleon's men ordered its systematic destruction, and luckily for da Vinci, they hadn't gotten to the Chapel before the British got to Napoleon.

Charles VIII died at the chateau in April 1498 at age 28 after bumping his head on a door frame on his way to a tennis match. This is what the pamphlet says, but I'm suspicious since I've seen very few lethal door frames in my life.