Château du Gué-Péan is a French castle in Monthou-sur-Cher in the department of Loir-et-Cher, in region Centre-Val de Loire.The presence of a Roman road near the castle, which crossed the stream by a ford, gave the first name to the locality: the paid ford, which later becomes the Gué-Péan. This is the fifteenth century that the Alaman family bought the manor and built the castle. The manor was built in châtellenie by François Alaman, vassal of the lord of Saint Aignan. His son toddler who finished building the castle. In October 1676, Charlotte Alaman sells the Gué-Péan and outbuildings to François de la Motte Villebret Count Aspremont. It is then Amelot family takes possession of the castle for 62 years. Then comes the family Cassin, owner of the Gué-Péan in 1832. They are the first to live there. The orangery was born in 1885 and the castle and has a winter garden. On 7 March 1952, much of the castle is classified historic monument. In 1961 the castle was sold to Mr. Kéguelin Rozières and later to Mr Laming. (Architect of Futuroscope).
http://www.frenchchateau.net/chateaux-of-centre/chateau-du-gue-pean.html

Château du Gué-Péan

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The Château de Montrichard is a ruined 11th century castle located at the heart of the commune of Montrichard in the Loir-et-Cher département of France. The property of the commune, it has been listed since 1877 as a monument historique by the French Ministry of Culture.
The castle was constructed by Foulques Nerra, Count of Anjou, and rebuilt in the 12th century. Henri IV ordered it to be dismantled in 1589. From the top of the keep visitors have a good view of the town of Montrichard and the Cher valley.

Château de Montrichard

The Château de Fougères-sur-Bièvre is a castle in the commune of Fougères-sur-Bièvre, in the French department of Loir-et-Cher.
Originally an 11th-century structure, it was entirely rebuilt at the end of the 15th century, with only the large, square keep remaining original. The initial reconstruction retained the defensive aspect of the castle: moat, cannon-holes, parapet walk, etc. During the next century, Renaissance refinements, such as a gallery, mullioned windows and steep-sloped roofs were added. During the 19th century, a spinning mill was installed in the chapel. The castle was purchased and restored by the state in the 1930s.
It has been listed since 1912 as an historic site (monument historique) by the French Ministry of Culture.

Château de Fougères-sur-Bièvre

Built in the 13th century, remodeled in the 15th and 16th centuries, and converted to farm in 1729, the castle is a living example Chémery backup.
Taken in 1981 by husband Fontaine, it is now almost entirely restored. The tour focuses on architecture.
Open every day from 11am to 18:30 and the evening possibility of lodging in hotels.
https://www.france-voyage.com/cities-towns/chemery-14552/castle-chemery-11718.htm

Castle of Chémery

A little bit of architecture
A stone's throw from the Châteaux de la Loire, an alley bordered with roses leads to this typical residence from the 15th and 17th centuries. Mahogany wooden furniture, crystal chandeliers or family pictures in black and white throw you in a sophisticated atmosphere of yesteryear bourgeoisie.
Currently the château’s façade has mullioned window bays topped with roof dormers with pinnacles and brackets. Fine water spouts punctuate this façade, and one of them is decorated with a cow’s head; the sculptures were left incomplete during the last restoration in the 19th Century. The main part of the building is built between two towers, a 13th Century pigeon loft and a square tower dating from the 15th Century. The pigeon loft was one of the towers of the previous fortified walls which was changed into a dovecote and then covered with a lantern dome in the 17th Century similar to the one at the Château de Serrant.
The lantern is topped with a metre-high lead spike which is decorated with a fine pigeon and three acanthus leaves. The right to own a dovecote was a privilege bestowed by the king to fiefdoms owned by nobles, and the dovecote comprised 400 pigeon and a ladder, and pivoted on a central axis which enabled it to be cleaned and for the droppings to be used as a fertilizer.
Each beam hole corresponded to a certain number of acres of land. The right to keep pigeons depended on the size of the grounds, making it very sought after as an external sign of prestige. One would never suspect that behind this main façade at the back of the château, on the opposite side of the courtyard, there stands a 15th Century stately home, reminiscent of the charms of some manor houses in Brittany, here blending shale and tufa. There remains a square tower which houses a fine spiral staircase. Major building work in the 17th Century extended this house southwards with a long building with huge windows and door with pediments, just like the façade of the Abbey of Saint-Georges. Facing this stately home built in the 15th and 16th Centuries, the remains of the medieval fortress still stand: a high perimeter wall with a parapet walk in the ruins of a square castle gates which opened into the internal courtyard of the mansion.
Great families
Across the centuries, the Château de l'Epinay has seen many illustrious families. Each of them had the opportunity to bring their own touch and to contribute to the character that defines the place today.
Some great Angevin families have been the owners of the fiefdom of l’Epinay. Aux Gastinel, who founded the fiefdom in the 12th Century were succeeded by the Montalais de Vern in the 15th and 16th centuries, the La Jaille in 1451, the Brie-Serrants, the d’Andignés. At the end of the 16th Century the lands passed to the d’Andigné family by marriage, and they held onto the fiefdom until 1730, the date when the de Cumont family became its owners. Arthur de Cumont who inherited the property in1874 was one of the descendants of this family, and he was a minister of public education. Nowadays, the property has long been the fiefdom of Mr Gasiorowski the mayor of Saint-Georges. The château was purchased in 1988 after suffering long years of neglect, and has largely been carefully restored. 
The fiefdom also brings to mind one of the greatest names of French Jean Racine, whose memory is strangely linked to the history of l’Epinay and particularly to the priory by the trial where he opposed Le Ferron to gain this position in 1666 following the resignation of his uncle Antoine Sconin, the Canon of Uzès and the Prior of l’Epinay.
After 3 years of legal proceedings, Racine abandonned the title of the Prior de l’Epinay but retained a trace of the squabbles in his only comedy ‘Les Plaideurs’, writing: “Squabbling is a language more foreign to me than anyone, and I have only used several barbarous words that I may have learned in a trial court that neither myself nor my judges heard correctly”. The Countess of Pimbèche in this famous comedy owes her existence to the contested title of the Prior of l’Epinay which however Racine declared in the title of ‘Andromaque’ in 1667. 
https://www.chateauepinay.com

Château de Épinay

The Château de Montpoupon is a castle in the commune of Céré-la-Ronde in the Indre-et-Loire département of France. It is situated to the east of Tours, 10 km south of Montrichard in a forested valley.
History
Originally a mediaeval fortress, the castle was altered by the lords of Prie and Buzançais. The postern was constructed in the 16th century.
Since the middle of 19th century, the castle has belonged to the Motte Saint Pierre family. It houses one of three French museums dedicated to hunting with dogs.
It has been listed since 1930 as a monument historique by the French Ministry of Culture.

Château de Montpoupon

The Château de Troussay is one of the smallest Châteaux of the Loire Valley, and is situated in Cheverny, in the Loir-et-Cher.
Originally a small manor house it belonged to Louis de la Saussaye in the 19th C. Louis was a noted for his work in the preservation of old buildings. His 'restoration'of Troussay allowed him to integrate many styles and objects into the building, giving it a very Eclectic style. It is akin to a 6 year old whose raided her mother's wardrobe.
History
The first building is recorded around 1450, although the oldest existing parts of the structure date from the Renaissance. This is when Robert de Bugy, director of the salt storehouses of the region of Blois and squire of King Francis I of France was the recorded owner. There are no records of a Lord of Troussay.
In the 17th century, the building was enlarged with a central body and two wings. A magnificent formal French style garden was laid out behind. In 1732, for the first time, the building changed owners: the last Demoiselle de Bugy sold the château to the Pelluys family. In 1741 Gabrielle Pulluys married Christophe de Réméon and the chateau was her dowry. Their son, Claude was a companion to Henri IV.
The family retained the château after the revolution, with no recorded damage. The owner was then another Christophe de Réméon who married Marie de la Saussaye. They had no children and so the couple adopted the son of François de Paule de la Saussaye and his wife Anne Louise on his fathers death in 1815. Louis inherited after the death of his uncle in 1828.
Louis de la Saussaye was a historian of the Loire châteaux, member of the Institut de France and rector of the Académies of Lyon and Poitiers. He recognised the problems of protecting the Loire inheritance especially after the destruction of many châteaux in the Revolution. A friend of Prosper Mérimée and Félix Duban, he restored the château with the architect Louis de la Morandière and incorporated decoration from other destroyed château, according to his own motto "fort à l'abandon". After his death in 1878 the château passed down to his children.
In 1900 the château was sold to Maurice Delamarre de Monchaux, son of Casimir Delamarre de Mouchaux, Count of Monchaux. Maurice had married Isore Hurault de Vibrate in 1896. She grew up in Cheverny and wanted to remain close to her family at the Château de Cheverny. Maurice died in 1952 and his daughter Elisabeth inherited the château. Married to Jacques Marcotte de Sainte-Marie in about 1940, her descendants still own the property. Limited areas and the grounds are open to the public.
Description
Façade of François I
The "François I" façade, is heavily influenced by the Château de Chambord. This formal entrance to the main house has insets of slate in the chimneys and stone mullion windows. The towers, built in the 18th century, have pinnacles, as at Chambord.
The right-hand wing (viewed from the formal entrance) houses the domestic offices: the bake house, hay loft and stables. The left-hand wing, built by Louis de Saussaye in the 19th C. houses the grand salon. Which is the reason for the asymmetry.
Several sculptures decorate the façade. The Main entrance is flanked by two capitals, one Renaissance from the Château de Bury and saved by Louis de la Saussaye; the other was made in the 19th century by the sculptor Lafargue. Over the entrance the small stone Virgin is a replica of the 15th C. wooden Virgin at the Château de Cheverny. A small relief of a woman from the Italian Renaissance was mounted on the left wing at the time of the restoration.
On the right-hand tower is a sundial, surrounded by an inscription in Latin: Ultimam time, fuit hora, carpe diem: "fear the last hour, time flees, seize the day". Opposite this, on the left-hand tower is a clock with only an hour hand.
Façade of Louis XII
The garden façade is in the Louis XII style: a mixture of late Gothic and early Renaissance. The stone pediments of the dormer windows and bases of windows with linenfold panels are pure Gothic. The most beautiful example of this mixture is the door to the tower: the original main door to the château. It was moved from the François I façade by Louis de la Saussaye because it was considered too small. One finds linenfold there too, a Gothic motif par excellence, but also, on the door stop, a salamander, an emblem of François I. Above, Louis de la Saussaye had engraved, in Greek, the sentence "Small is the house, but oh how much happiness, if it is filled with friends." ascribed to the general Themistocles.
The tower dates from the 19th century. Modeled on the towers of the Louis XII wing of the Château de Blois, it shares their most notable characteristic: lattices of red and black bricks. Above a François I shell, a small marmouset commemorates the construction with a banner in Latin: "united by friendship, Louis de la Saussaye wanted, Jules de la Morandière realized".
Other recovered sculptures were also mounted, in particular a porcupine, emblem of Louis XII, from l'hôtel Hurault de Cheverny in Blois and two sottise characters: the pope of fools and the insane mother.
Interior
The castle is privately owned and inhabited but six rooms on the ground floor are open to visitors:
the Entrance Hall
the Dining room
the Music room, or "Salon Louis de la Saussaye"
the Small salon
the Oval salon
the Chapel
The ground floor is tiled throughout with red and yellow tiles dating from late 15th C.; only in the oval salon was it removed when the chateau was restored in the 19th C.
The ceilings are of notable interest: in the Dining Room, the ceiling à la française is inspired by the François I wing of the Castle of Blois, it is beamed with painted decoration. The Music room remains one of the original ceilings. The Entrance Hall is vaulted like the Château of Blois, as is the Chapel. The à l'italienne paintings on the ceiling of the small salon are most remarkable: Attributed to Jean Mosnier from Sologne, the paintings were produced for the Château de Fosse. Found in the 19th century in a house in Fosse by Louis de la Saussaye, they were brought to Troussay and represent a sarabande of cupids, painted in grisaille. One should also note that the fireplace in the Dining room dates from the reign of François I and retains its original colours. On it stands a bust of Jean de Morvilliers (1552–1564), bishop of Orléans, who was related to the De Saussaye family, indeed he was succeeded as Bishop of Orleans by his nephew: Mathurin dea Saussaye. Beneath the bust is engraved in Latin "do not contemplate in vain the effigy of Jean de Morvilliers, but rather seek to be the imitator of so great a man".
The château now holds objects of many different times, styles and origins, from the 15th to 19th centuries and from Holland to Portugal. Noted pieces of furniture are perhaps a large armoire from Strasbourg dating from 1700 and a Louis XIII cabinet with marquetry of jasmine and tulip flowers. The most remarkable object is the heavily decorated Renaissance oak door of the chapel, from the Château de Bury.
The park
The old French formal garden were completely abandoned in the 18th century; the park was relaid out in the 19th century by Louis de la Saussaye in the English Park style. Currently only a ditch, the vestige of the old water level and two small pavilions remain of the old garden. There are a diverse collection of trees, such as a Cedar of Lebanon planted in the 18th century, Sequoias from America and an immense Blue Cedar.
The Museum of Sologne and the Domestic Exhibition
Troussay celebrates its history Renaissance manor and also the history Solognot agriculture: Cultivated until the middle of the 20th century as an almost completely autonomous community. The two wings made it possible to house the farm workers, animals (pigs, cattle and horses), store food reserves and house a wineary, bakery, etc. all within the same complex.
Nowadays, the museum of the Sologne is sited in this domestic wing with many agricultural examples of everyday life from the past including a 16th C. screw press, other aspects of daily life at Troussay, including old documents and well dressed tableau's.
Anecdotes
In front of the François I façade, stands a holly tree reputed to be more than five hundred years old, planted there according to the Solognote tradition to chase away miscriants with its prickles.

Château de Troussay

Another Renaissance masterpiece in the Loire Valley, Chaumont Castle, with its pale stone and sloping slate roofs, dominates the Loire River and the village of Chaumont-sur-Loire, just a stone’s throw from the towns of Blois (17 km) and Amboise (20 km).

Until the 15th century, it was a medieval castle belonging to the Counts of Blois, which is revealed by the two massive round guard towers at the entrance of the building. In the 10th century, Eudes I, Count of Blois, built the castle of Chaumont on a site overlooking the Loire River (‘Calvus mons’ or ‘bald mount’) which would protect the city of Blois from the raids of Foulques Nerra, Count of Anjou.

In 1455, Louis XI ordered the dismantlement of Chaumont Castle as an act of punishment against Pierre of Amboise who led a rebellion against the King’s authority during the “Ligue du bien public” (League of Public Good). His son, Charles I of Amboise rebuilt the fortress from 1465 to 1481 (North and West wings) in a Gothic defensive style, with a wall-walk, machicolation and dry moats. Later on, the feudal shapes of Chaumont Castle were softened by conical roofs and Renaissance elements. From 1498 to 1510, Charles II of Chaumont Amboise, assisted by his uncle, Cardinal Georges of Amboise, Archbishop of Rouen, continued the renovation work in a style influenced by the Renaissance, while keeping the feudal structure of the castle: South wing, gatehouse, East wing and chapel and large staircase in the courtyard that was almost square. The angles were cardinal at four points, same as Chambord. In 1501, Charles II was made governor of the Milanese by Louis XII. His appointment in Italy led Charles II to bring back to the Loire Valley the new fashionable style of Renaissance, hence the Italianate features appearing at Chaumont Castle. During this time a frieze showing two interlaced ‘C’s representing Charles II of Chaumont Amboise and his wife Catherine of Chauvigny was engraved on the façade of the Castle’s external walls, as well as a burning mount (chaud mont).

In 1550, Catherine de Medicis, Queen of France, came into possession of Chaumont Castle. There she entertained numerous astrologers, among them the sorcerer Ruggieri, her adviser on the occult arts. Legend has it that Catherine de Medicis used to retire with her adviser in a secret hideaway where they would conduct magic rites and interrogate the stars about the future.

Ten years later, the estate was offered by Catherine de Medicis, then widow of King Henri II, to Diane de Poitiers, the Kings’ mistress, to take her revenge on her husband’s adultery. Her plan was to exchange it for Chenonceau Castle which the King had given Diane in 1547, the year of his coronation. Diane was forced to give Chenonceau away for Chaumont but only stay a short while in her new place, before retiring to Anet Castle for the rest of her life.

Chaumont Castle changed hands many times until the 18th century when the chatelain Bertin ordered the demolition of the north wing in order to have a better view of the Loire. Remarkable stables were commissioned in 1877 to architect Paul-Ernest Sanson. The same architect was asked by Prince Henri Amédée de Broglie to work on a comprehensive restoration of the castle. The stables were amongst the first in Europe to be equipped with electric arc lighting, at the same time as the Opera Garnier and the Paris Town Hall. They reflected the conditions of wealthy aristocracy at the end of the 19th century.

For 40 years, Chaumont Castle saw extravagant parties and celebrations. Unfortunately, the Princess of Broglie was forced to sell the castle in 1938 to the State due to her financial problems. Since 2007, the entire estate of Chaumont-sur-Loire has been transferred to the administrative region of Centre and covers 21 hectares comprising the castle, the stables, the ornamental garden, a vast woodland and meadows. Chaumont Castle is currently a museum and hosts a Garden Festival from April to October where contemporary garden designers display their work in an English-style garden.

Many rooms, stairways and interior features of Chaumont Castle were remodeled or added in the Renaissance style in the 19th century.

The visit of Chaumont’s interiors lead the visitors through the Guard Room, the necessary passageway to the Royal Chamber. It was also used as a training area for the guards and provided a place from which to watch the exterior of the castle and still keep an eye on the interior courtyard. The bedroom of Diane de Poitiers is named in reference to King Henri II’s mistress and was furnished by the Prince de Broglie at the end of the 19th century. It contains various art objects related to Diane de Poitiers. The Council Chamber exhibits majolica tiling from the 17th century, bought by the de Broglie family. The bedroom of Catherine de Medicis was named so by Prince de Broglie, but it was an apartment in its own right in the 15th and 16th centuries. The bedroom of Ruggieri, has been called so after Catherine de Medicis’ appointed astrologer, and is referred to as such because of the sign on the mantelpiece, considered to be a cabalistic sign. The beautiful main spiral staircase shows the gradual influence of the Renaissance style from Italy over Gothic style around 1500.


...Copyright © French Moments Ltd unless otherwise stated. Read more at https://frenchmoments.eu/chaumont-sur-loire-castle/ .

Château de Chaumont

Château du Plessis-de-Vair is located Vair-sur-Loire (common delegated Anetz) in Loire-Atlantique. Castle Vair rents its rooms for private functions.In the twelfth century, powerful fortress surrounded by a moat, it inspires novels legendary Knights of the Round Table and the Holy Grail. In the fifteenth century castle replaces this feudal stronghold. It remains this time two round towers, dovecote and archives. In the seventeenth century, the castle became the seat of the Marquis of Châteaufromont (Anetz, Saint-Herblon, The Rouxière); the Marquis de Vair, Claude Cornulier (1633-1700), Chairman of the Parliament of Brittany, advisor of Louis XIV built the two square towers, chapel, orangery and two pavilions of the entrance. In the nineteenth century is built the central building and a row of light shows. The monument was listed as a historic monument in 1980 and 2003.
http://www.frenchchateau.net/chateaux-of-pays-de-la-loire/chateau-du-plessis-de-vair.html

Château du Plessis-de-Vair

The Château de Chenonceau is a French château spanning the River Cher, near the small village of Chenonceaux in the Indre-et-Loire département of the Loire Valley in France. It is one of the best-known châteaux of the Loire valley.
The estate of Chenonceau is first mentioned in writing in the 11th century. The current château was built in 1514–1522 on the foundations of an old mill and was later extended to span the river. The bridge over the river was built (1556-1559) to designs by the French Renaissance architect Philibert de l'Orme, and the gallery on the bridge, built from 1570–1576 to designs by Jean Bullant.
An architectural mixture of late Gothic and early Renaissance, Château de Chenonceau and its gardens are open to the public. Other than the Royal Palace of Versailles, it is the most visited château in France.
The château has been classified as a Monument historique since 1840 by the French Ministry of Culture. Today, Chenonceau is a major tourist attraction and in 2007 received around 800,000 visitors.
History
The Marques family
In the 13th century, the fief of Chenonceau belonged to the Marques family. The original château was torched in 1412 to punish owner Jean Marques for an act of sedition. He rebuilt a château and fortified mill on the site in the 1430s. Jean Marques's indebted heir Pierre Marques found it necessary to sell.
Thomas Bohier
Thomas Bohier (fr), Chamberlain to King Charles VIII of France, purchased the castle from Pierre Marques in 1513 (this leads to 2013 being considered the 500th anniversary of the castle: MDXIII–MMXIII.) Bohier demolished the castle, though its 15th-century keep was left standing, and built an entirely new residence between 1515 and 1521. The work was overseen by his wife Katherine Briçonnet, who delighted in hosting French nobility, including King Francis I on two occasions.
Diane de Poitiers
In 1535 the château was seized from Bohier's son by King Francis I of France for unpaid debts to the Crown; after Francis' death in 1547, Henry II offered the château as a gift to his mistress, Diane de Poitiers, who became fervently attached to the château along the river. In 1555 she commissioned Philibert de l'Orme to build the arched bridge joining the château to its opposite bank. Diane then oversaw the planting of extensive flower and vegetable gardens along with a variety of fruit trees. Set along the banks of the river, but buttressed from flooding by stone terraces, the exquisite gardens were laid out in four triangles.
Diane de Poitiers was the unquestioned mistress of the castle, but ownership remained with the crown until 1555, when years of delicate legal maneuvers finally yielded possession to her.
Catherine de' Medici
After King Henry II died in 1559, his strong-willed widow and regent Catherine de' Medici forced Diane to exchange it for the Château Chaumont. Queen Catherine then made Chenonceau her own favorite residence, adding a new series of gardens.
As Regent of France, Catherine spent a fortune on the château and on spectacular nighttime parties. In 1560, the first ever fireworks display seen in France took place during the celebrations marking the ascension to the throne of Catherine's son Francis II. The grand gallery, which extended along the existing bridge to cross the entire river, was dedicated in 1577. Catherine also added rooms between the chapel and the library on the east side of the corps de logis, as well as a service wing on the west side of the entry courtyard.
Catherine considered an even greater expansion of the château, shown in an engraving published by Jacques Androuet du Cerceau in the second (1579) volume of his book Les plus excellents bastiments de France. If this project had been executed, the current château would have been only a small portion of an enormous manor laid out "like pincers around the existing buildings."
Louise de Lorraine
On Catherine's death in 1589 the château went to her daughter-in-law, Louise de Lorraine-Vaudémont, wife of King Henry III. At Chenonceau Louise was told of her husband's assassination in 1589 and she fell into a state of depression, spending the remainder of her days wandering aimlessly along the château's corridors dressed in mourning clothes amidst somber black tapestries stitched with skulls and crossbones.
Duc de Vendôme
Henri IV obtained Chenonceau for his mistress Gabrielle d'Estrées by paying the debts of Catherine de' Medici, which had been inherited by Louise and were threatening to ruin her. In return Louise left the château to her niece Françoise de Lorraine, at that time six years old and betrothed to the four-year-old César de Bourbon, duc de Vendôme, the natural son of Gabrielle d'Estrées and Henri IV. The château belonged to the Duc de Vendôme and his descendants for more than a hundred years. The Bourbons had little interest in the château, except for hunting. In 1650, Louis XIV was the last king of the ancien régime to visit.
The Château de Chenonceau was bought by the Duke of Bourbon in 1720. Little by little, he sold off all of the castle's contents. Many of the fine statues ended up at Versailles.
Louise Dupin
In 1733 the estate was sold for 130,000 livres to a wealthy squire named Claude Dupin (fr). His wife, Louise Dupin, was the natural daughter of the financier Samuel Bernard and the actress Manon Dancourt (fr), whose mother was also an actress who had joined the Comédie Française in 1684. Louise Dupin was "an intelligent, beautiful, and highly cultivated woman who had the theater in her blood." Claude Dupin, a widower, had a son, Louis Claude, from his first wife Marie Aurore of Saxony, who was the grandmother of George Sand (born Aurore Dupin).
Louise Dupin's literary salon at Chenonceau attracted such leaders of the Enlightenment as the writers Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Fontenelle, the naturalist Buffon, the playwright Marivaux, the philosopher Condillac, as well as the Marquise de Tencin and the Marquise du Deffand. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was Dupin's secretary and tutored her son. Rousseau, who worked on Émile at Chenonceau, wrote in his Confessions: "We played music there and staged comedies. I wrote a play in verse entitled Sylvie's Path, after the name of a path in the park along the Cher."
The widowed Louise Dupin saved the château from destruction during the French Revolution, preserving it from being destroyed by the Revolutionary Guard because "it was essential to travel and commerce, being the only bridge across the river for many miles."
Marguerite Pelouze
In 1864 Marguerite Pelouze (fr ), a rich heiress, acquired the château. Around 1875 she commissioned the architect Félix Roguet to restore it. He almost completely renewed the interior and removed several of Catherine de' Medici's additions, including the rooms between the library and the chapel and her alterations to the north facade, among which were figures of Hercules, Pallas, Apollo, and Cybele that were moved to the park. With the money Marguerite spent on these projects and elaborate parties, her finances were depleted, and the château was seized and sold.
Recent history
José-Emilio Terry, a Cuban millionaire, acquired Chenonceau from Madame Pelouze in 1891. Terry sold it in 1896 to a family member, Francisco Terry. In 1913, the château was acquired by Henri Menier, a member of the Menier family, famous for their chocolates, who still own it to this day.
During World War I Gaston Menier set up the gallery to be used as a hospital ward. During the Second World War the château was bombed by the Germans in June 1940. It was also a means of escaping from the Nazi occupied zone on one side of the River Cher to the "free" zone on the opposite bank. Occupied by the Germans, the château was bombed by the Allies on 7 June 1944, when the chapel was hit and its windows destroyed.
In 1951, the Menier family entrusted the château's restoration to Bernard Voisin, who brought the dilapidated structure and the gardens (ravaged in the Cher River flood in 1940) back to a reflection of its former glory.

Château de Chenonceau

Château de Selles-sur-Cher is a château located in the commune of Selles-sur-Cher, in the Loir-et-Cher department in the Centre-Val de Loire region, France. The château is privately owned and is a designated historical monument of France.
History
Structures have been on the site as far back as the late 10th century, when Theobald I, Count of Blois, built a dungeon into the mound. Around 1140, Ginon de Mehun built a fortified castle on the site. In 1212, Robert de Courtenay of the Capetian House of Courtenay built a new castle with three corner towers and a gatehouse.
In the second half of the 16th century, the north and south pavilions and a south gatehouse were built, most likely for the de Trémouille family, lords of Selles. The pavilions, main entrance and interior of the 13th-century gatehouse were redesigned in 1612 for Philippe de Béthune, count of Selles, by architect Jacques Androuet II du Cerceau.
In 1719, Anne-Marie-Louise de Béthune, sister of the queen of Poland, sold the castle to Cardin Lebret, count of Selles. In 1810, Armand-Louis-Jean de Jehannot, Marquis de Bartillat, owned the castle and began significant renovations. However, in 1813 the Bande noire destroyed the west gallery. Starting in 1880, the castle underwent significant restoration work under the du Moulinet d'Hardemare family. Architect Pierre Chauvallon led a major restoration of the château in 1913.
Château today
The castle had been abandoned by 2002. It was purchased by Michel Guyot and his wife, Noémi Brunet. Guyot has done restoration work on previous castles, including Château de Saint-Fargeau, and is behind the Guédelon Castle project. In 2012, it was opened to the public. Later that year, they sold it to Nicolas Mazzesi and his wife Katherine Wu, who plan to open a winery on the site. The château hosts festivals and other events, and is the first tourist site in France to offer a virtual reality tour.
In early 2016, a German architecture student from the University of Heidelberg, who had viewed the châteaux of the Loire Valley via Google Earth, discovered a previously unknown map of Château de Selles-sur-Cher drawn by Swedish architect Carl Johan Cronstedt (1709–1779). The map of the castle and its elaborate French garden had been digitized by the National Museum in Stockholm and was classified as being of unknown origin, until the German student recognized it as Selles-sur-Cher.
In April 2016, a 300-year-old Lebanon Cedar on the grounds of the castle was named a "Remarkable Tree of France" (French: Arbre remarquable de France). The tree stands 34.60 metres (113.5 ft) high with a circumference of 7.85 metres (25.8 ft).