Château d'Azay-le-Rideau

Honoré de Balzac, who knew the Touraine well, called Azay-le-Rideau a faceted diamond set in the Indre, and the phrase has stuck because it is accurate. The château rises straight out of an arm of the river on an island, and on a still day its white tufa walls, slate roofs and pepper-pot turrets hang upside down in the water around it. It is small by Loire standards, and that is part of its charm: the building reads as one clear idea rather than an accumulation of centuries.

It was built between 1518 and 1527 for Gilles Berthelot, mayor of Tours and a treasurer of the royal finances, on the site of a medieval fortress that guarded the road between Tours and Chinon. Because Berthelot was often away, the works were largely overseen by his wife, Philippe Lesbahy. The stone came by boat from quarries near Saint-Aignan, and the walls stand on wooden piles driven into the damp island ground. The design marries the new Italian taste of the early French Renaissance with the vocabulary of a castle: machicolations and corner turrets are kept, but as ornament, not defence. Only two wings of the planned courtyard were built, giving the château its L-shaped plan.

The great internal staircase is the thing to study closely. Instead of the spiral stair usual at the time, it climbs in straight flights under a coffered vault, one of the earliest of its kind in France, and its ceiling is carved with medallions of French kings; the entrance bears the initials of Berthelot and his wife, and the pediments carry the salamander and ermine of Francis I and Claude of France. The couple never enjoyed the result. In 1527 the fall of the royal finance minister Jacques de Beaune-Semblançay, Berthelot's relative, forced Gilles to flee; the king confiscated the unfinished house and later gave it to one of his captains. The Marquis de Biencourt bought it in 1787, and his family restored it in the nineteenth century and laid out the romantic landscape park. The French state acquired it in 1905, and today it is cared for by the Centre des monuments nationaux as part of the Loire Valley World Heritage Site.

Getting there

The château is in the small town of Azay-le-Rideau in Indre-et-Loire, about 18 km from Joué-lès-Tours on the southern edge of Tours. Tours Val de Loire Airport (TUF) is about 28 km away. Regional trains on the Tours–Chinon line stop at Azay-le-Rideau station, with a journey from Tours of roughly half an hour.