The Château de Saché is a writer's house museum located in a home built from the converted remains of a feudal castle. Located in Saché, Indre-et-Loire, between 1830 and 1837, it is where French writer Honoré de Balzac wrote many of his novels in the series La Comédie Humaine in which he attempted to reflect every aspect of French society at that time.
The château was owned by Balzac's friend, Jean de Margonne, his mother's lover and the father of her youngest child. The writer would often spend long periods staying here, away from his turbulent life in Paris, writing 14 to 16 hours a day. After supper he would sleep a few hours, wake around midnight and write until morning, sustained by large amounts of coffee.
Since 1951, the château has been open as an evocative museum dedicated to Balzac. His small second-floor bedroom has a simple bed and writing desk where so many of his often tormented characters were conceived.
The château was built upon the foundations of a twelfth-century fortified house, of which a cylindrical tower and dry moats remain. The building was successively transformed in the 16th through 18th centuries. It has been listed as a monument historique since June 1983 by the French Ministry of Culture.

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The Château d'Azay-le-Rideau is located in the town of Azay-le-Rideau in the French département of Indre-et-Loire. Built between 1518 and 1527, this château is considered one of the foremost examples of early French renaissance architecture. Set on an island in the middle of the Indre river, this picturesque château has become one of the most popular of the châteaux of the Loire valley.
Origins of the Château
The current château of Azay-le-Rideau occupies the site of a former feudal castle. During the 12th century, the local seigneur Ridel (or Rideau) d'Azay, a knight in the service of Philip II Augustus, built a fortress here to protect the Tours to Chinon road where it crossed the river Indre.
However, this original medieval castle fell victim to the rivalry between Burgundian and Armagnac factions during the Hundred Years' War. In 1418, the future Charles VII passed through Azay-le-Rideau as he fled from Burgundian occupied Paris to the loyal Armagnac stronghold of Bourges. Angered by the insults of the Burgundian troops occupying the town, the dauphin ordered his own army to storm the castle. The 350 soldiers inside were all executed and the castle itself burnt to the ground. For centuries, this fate was commemorated in the town's name of Azay-le-Brûlé (literally Azay the Burnt), which remained in use until the 18th century.
The Berthelots and the 16th century
The castle remained in ruins until 1518, when the land was acquired by Gilles Berthelot, the Mayor of Tours and Treasurer-General of the King's finances.[3] Desiring a residence to reflect his wealth and status, Berthelot set about reconstructing the building in a way that would incorporate its medieval past alongside the latest architectural styles of the Italian renaissance. Although the château's purpose was to be largely residential, defensive fortifications remained important symbols of prestige, and so Berthelot was keen to have them for his new castle. He justified his request to the King, Francis I, by an exaggerated description of the many 'public thieves, footpads and other vagabonds, evildoers committing affray, disputes, thefts, larcenies, outrages, extortions and sundry other evils' which threatened unfortified towns such as Azay-le-Rideau.
Berthelot's duties meant that he was frequently absent from the château, so the responsibility for supervising the building works fell to his wife, Philippa Lesbahy. These took time, since it was difficult to lay solid foundations in the damp ground of this island in the Indre, and the château had to be raised on stilts driven into the mud. Even once the foundations were laid, construction still progressed slowly, as much of the stone for the château came from the Saint-Aignan quarry, which was famous for its hard-wearing rock but was also around 100 km (62 mi) away, meaning that the heavy blocks had to be transported to Azay-le-Rideau by boat.
The château was still incomplete in 1527, when the execution of Jacques de Beaune, (the chief minister in charge of royal finances and cousin to Berthelot) forced Gilles to flee the country. Possibly fearing the exposure of his own financial misdemeanours, he went into exile first in Metz in Lorraine, and later in Cambrai, where he died just two years later. Disregarding the pleas of Berthelot's wife Philippa, Francis I confiscated the unfinished château and, in 1535, gave it to Antoine Raffin, one of his knights-at-arms. Raffin undertook only minor renovations in the château, and so the building works remained incomplete, with only the south and west wings of the planned quadrilateral ever being built. Thus, the château preserved the distinctive, but accidental, L-shape which it retains to this day.
17th–18th centuries
In 1583, Raffin's granddaughter Antoinette, a former lady-in-waiting to Margaret of Valois, took up residence in the château and, with the help of her husband Guy de Saint-Gelais, began modernising the décor. Azay-le-Rideau was then inherited by their son Arthur and his wife Françoise de Souvre, a future governess to Louis XIV, and it was during their ownership that the new château received its first royal visit: on June 27, 1619, while on his way from Paris to visit his mother, Marie de Medici, in Blois, Louis XIII broke his journey to spend the night in Azay-le-Rideau. Later in the century, his son Louis XIV would also be a guest in the same room.
The Biencourts and the 19th century
The Raffins and their relations by marriage the Vassés retained ownership of the château until 1787, when it was sold for 300,000 livres to the Marquis Charles de Biencourt, field marshal of the king's armies. The château was in poor condition, though, and from the 1820s, Biencourt undertook extensive alteration work. In 1824, he added a 'Chinese room' (destroyed in the 1860s) to the ground floor in the south wing, and in 1825 or 1826 decorated the library with carved wood panelling to match the drawing room on the opposite side.
It was his son, Armand-François-Marie, a guard of Louis XVI who participated in the defence of the Tuileries on 10 August 1792, who began the first extensive restoration of the château. This included restoring the old medallions and royal insignia on the staircase (which had been covered up during the Revolution), extending the courtyard façade and adding a new tower at the east corner. These developments destroyed the last vestiges of the old medieval fortress and meant that the château at last achieved a finished appearance. For these renovations, he employed the Swiss architect Pierre-Charles Dusillon, who was also working on the neighbouring château of Ussé.
During the Franco-Prussian War, the château was once again threatened with destruction. It served as the headquarters for the Prussian troops in the area, but when one night a chandelier fell from the ceiling onto the table where their leader, Prince Friedrich Karl of Prussia, was dining, he suspected an assassination attempt and ordered his soldiers to set fire to the building. Only his officers' assurances that the lamp had dropped by accident persuaded him to stay his hand and thus saved the château from a second burning.
Following the Prussian troops' retreat, Azay-le-Rideau returned to the Biencourts. In this period, the château became well known for the collection of more than 300 historical portraits which the owners displayed there and which, unusually for a private collection, could be visited by the public. In 1899, financial difficulties forced the young widower Charles-Marie-Christian de Biencourt to sell the château, along with its furniture and 540 hectares of land, to the businessman Achille Arteau, a former lawyer from Tours who wanted to sell its contents for profit. As a result, the château was emptied and its artwork and furniture dispersed.
The Château in the 20th century
In 1905, the estate was purchased by the French state for 250,000 francs and became a listed Historical Monument. During the early years of the Second World War, 1939-1940, the château provided a home for the Education Ministry when they, like many other French ministries, withdrew from Paris. The château d'Azay-le-Rideau is now one of many national monuments under the protection of the Centre des monuments nationaux, and also forms part of the Loire valley UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Château d'Azay-le-Rideau

The Château de Candé is a castle located in the commune of Monts, Indre-et-Loire, 10 km (6 mi) to the south of Tours on the border of the Indre River in France.
History
The first known Lord of Candé was Macé de Larçay, in 1313. François Briçonnet, the mayor of Tours and state treasurer, purchased the fief in 1499 and built a Renaissance house on the site of the old fortress. He died before the building was finished, and it was completed by his daughter, Jeanne, in 1508.
Several owners succeeded to the estate, but none brought major transformations to the castle. According to terms of a sale contract dated 28 June 1715 between Georges-François de Guénand, seigneur de l'Étang and Pierre Anguille de la Niverdière, the land consisted of a château-fort, enclosed walls, ditches, drawbridge, barns, gardens, orchards, vines, mature wood of standing timbers and coppice, wild rabbits, and many other things.
On 24 June 1853, Santiago Drake del Castillo, heir of a wealthy plantation owner, acquired the castle. At this time the northern wing was added, in the neo-gothic style; this tripled the living space. M. Drake del Castllo also founded a free school for some sixty young girls, in the valley between the château and the railway right-of-way.
Charles E. Bedaux and the royal wedding
In 1927, Charles Bedaux, a Franco-American industrial millionaire, and his wife Fern, purchased the castle from Jean Drake del Castillo, the grandson of Santiago. They carried out substantial work to modernise the castle, such as adding a plumbing system, improving the electrical system and installing central heating in all parts of the building, with 60 tons of pipes installed in the walls. The eight bedrooms are each equipped with a bathroom in the art déco style; all have baths equipped with an American system, making it possible to fill and empty a bathtub in less than one minute. Indoor toilets were also added. Bedaux installed a telephone, which at the time was unique in a French residence; it was directly connected to the exchange in Tours, and therefore required an operator to be present in the castle.
A golf course with 18 holes, a tennis court, a gymnasium and a solarium were also built at this time.
In 1937, the marriage of the Duke of Windsor (formerly King Edward VIII), and Wallis Simpson took place here. Cecil Beaton took their wedding photos here as well.
On the death of Fern Bedaux in 1972, the castle was bequeathed to the State, which reassigned it to the council of Indre-et-Loire in 1974.

Château de Candé

The Château de Villandry is a grand country house located in Villandry, in the département of Indre-et-Loire, France. It is especially known for its beautiful gardens.
History
The lands where an ancient fortress once stood were known as Columbine until the 17th century. They were acquired in the early 16th century by Jean Le Breton, France's Controller-General for War under King Francis I, and a new château was constructed around the original 14th-century keep where King Philip II of France once met Richard I of England to discuss peace.
The château remained in the Le Breton family for more than two centuries until it was acquired by the Marquis de Castellane. During the French Revolution the property was confiscated and in the early 19th century, Emperor Napoleon acquired it for his brother Jérôme Bonaparte.
In 1906, Joachim Carvallo purchased the property and poured an enormous amount of time, money and devotion into repairing it and creating extremely beautiful gardens. Its famous Renaissance gardens include a water garden, ornamental flower gardens, and vegetable gardens. The gardens are laid out in formal patterns created with low box hedges. In 1934, Château de Villandry was designated a Monument historique. Like all the other châteaux of the Loire Valley, it is a World Heritage Site.
Recent times
Still owned by the Carvallo family, the Château de Villandry is open to the public and is one of the most visited châteaux in France; in 2007 the château received about 330,000 visitors.

Château de Villandry

The Château d'Artigny was built between 1919 and 1928 in the Commune of Montbazon, in the department of Indre-et-Loire, France.
The First Castles
Having originally been constructed around the keep of Montbazon, an advanced bastion, during the Hundred Years' War, the Château d'Artigny was incorporated into the line of defences established along the Indre River. It was subsequently demolished in 1769 by its owner, Joseph Testard de Bouranis, the king's treasurer, who replaced it with his private residence. This survived the Revolution and was modified in the 19th Century.
François Coty
It was on 30 July 1912 when Joseph Spoturno, also known as François Coty, bought the château. Born on 3 May 1874 in Ajaccio, he was a wealthy and renowned perfumer and media magnate, as well as politician. Later dubbed "The French Mussolini", he was the councillor for Bastia and mayor of his native town in 1931.
On a journey around Touraine he was captivated by the location but, feeling the building to be badly placed on the cliff overlooking the Indre, he had the château demolished and rebuilt 12 metres further away on foundations different from the current ones. Measuring 60 metres by 18 metres and 27 tall, it was a mirror image, except for two windows fewer on each floor, of the château at Épinay-Champlâtreux which was constructed by the architect Jean-Michel Chevotet between 1751 and 1757. There was also a chapel which was a copy of the one at the Palace of Versailles, albeit a quarter of the size. The chapel was connected by an underground passage to a crypt made for François Coty and his descendants.
The period from 1919 to 1928 marked the partial end of this major project. Coty, "wanting to show that modern France was capable of performing just as well as royal France", employed 150 people – architects, master builders, sculptors, carvers, tile setters, painters, craftsmen and labourers. Denys Puech, the official sculptor (a receiver of the Prix de Rome) constructed an 18th-century style allegory on the tympanum of the pediment of the central front section overlooking the Indre valley.
This magnificently decorated, marble covered residence included four master apartments, its own generating station, air conditioning, a tailor’s and a bootmaker’s, a barber’s, cold storage for the lady of the house’s furs, as well as a walk-in dressing room containing 78 closets, to name but a few of the luxuries.
From 1929 up until Coty’s death in 1934 at his residence at Louveciennes (acquired in 1923), he lived for half of the year at Artigny with his family. During this time, he was waited on by 40 servants, employed several guards to watch his 1,300 hectare estate, which in one fell swoop included seven kilometres of river, French gardens, orchard greenhouses, several farms, three mills, a hunting lodge, a rectory and abandoned school buildings.
The office of the "Monsieur de Montbazon" was located on the first floor and had pride of place in a circular room topped with a dome. The dome was painted with a trompe l’oeil fresco by Charles Hoffbauer, a receiver of the Grand Prix de Rome 1924, and depicted a costume ball with friends and family at the château, in which it was possible to recognise Coty’s son-in-law, Paul Dubonnet as a sparrow with a glass in his hand. It was also possible to see the actresses Mary Marquet, Edwige Feuillère and Cécile Sorel, the ballet masters Serge Lifar and Serge Diaghilev, the painter Foujita, and the Aga Khan.
After Coty
Following the Crash of 1929, a luxurious lifestyle, a disastrous divorce, and the expense of his political magazine L’Ami du Peuple, his fortune had been heavily eaten into. The perfumer’s art collections were therefore sold at auction in 124 lots at the Galerie Charpentier in Paris on 30 November and 1 December 1936. After his death, the château was confiscated on the order of his numerous creditors.
In 1940, at the time when the French capital was relocated to Tours, the château had been identified as a potential shelter by a local aide-de-camp of Admiral Darlan and was subsequently occupied by the Department of the Navy. In 1941 it lay empty for a few months before being occupied by German troops until 1942, who in the meantime had painted the château brown to act as camouflage. Finally, it served as an annexe of Tours hospital, catering for the seriously wounded.
Coty’s family once again took possession of the château in 1947 and were made several offers. The projects to convert it into the head office of Indre-et-Loire’s general council or into a holiday park were not followed up so the heirs began to carve up the enormous estate.
After two years, in the course of which the library was converted into a lounge bar offering a unique collection of cognac, armagnac, port and whisky, it was opened at the end of 1961, under the name of the "Relais d'Artigny", becoming the first hotel company in Centre-Val de Loire. The wine cellar holds around 45,000 bottles of French wine, the finest collection in the world of Touraine wines. Since opening, Artigny has welcomed a number of personalities such as the Queen Mother and in 1963 Haile Selassie I, the last emperor of Ethiopia.
On 24–25 November 1973, under the guise of the establishment's annual closing, the finance ministers of the G5 countries met in the château for the International Monetary Conference, with Valéry Giscard d'Estaing presiding for France.
In April 1976, an inconspicuous meeting took place between the French President and his future successor, François Mitterrand at the château.
Artigny still belongs to the family hotel group, “Grandes Étapes Françaises”, whose president is Pierre Traversac. The château-hotel has 65 bedrooms, two dining rooms and a spa.

Château d'Artigny

The Château de Cinq-Mars is a castle in the commune of Cinq-Mars-la-Pile in the Indre-et-Loire département of France.
The castle was built in the 12th century, with significant additions and alterations from the 13th, 15th and 16th centuries.
History
The first known feudal seigneur was living in 1050. Following the execution of the owner, Henri de Ruzé d'Effiat, Grand Écuyer (squire) and favourite of the King, in 1642 the fortress was rased by order of Cardinal Richelieu.
The 15th century guard house, whose façades were modified in the 18th and 19th centuries, developed between two round towers; the northern tower has an attached staircase tower. The fortress is surrounded by moats, rebuilt in the 16th century. The drawbridge was replaced by a fixed three-arched bridge. Of the four towers linked to the buildings or the curtain wall, only the East Tower, the South Tower (13th century) and the base of the North Tower (the end-of-12th century keep) remain.
The upper floors have been destroyed. The towers are crowned with a modern fantasy crenelation. A triangular construction, called the Eperon, extends from the south east of the fortress. The salient angle is occupied by a bartizan. It was constructed or remodelled in the 16th century, at the same time as the moats. In the corresponding corner of the wall above the moat is a cylindrical tower dating from the 15th century which contained a stone spiral staircase which allowed the lords to descend from the castle to the priory joined to the church.
The castle is privately owned. It has been listed since 1976 as a monument historique by the French Ministry of Culture.

Château de Cinq-Mars la Pile

The Château de Langeais is a medieval castle in Indre-et-Loire, France, built on a promontory created by the small valley of the Roumer River at the opening to the Loire Valley. Founded in 992 by Fulk Nerra, Count of Anjou, the castle was soon attacked by Odo I, Count of Blois. After the unsuccessful attack, the now-ruined stone keep was built; it is one of the earliest datable stone examples of a keep. Between 994 and 996 the castle was besieged unsuccessfully twice more. During the conflict between the counts of Anjou and Blois, the castle changed hands several times, and in 1038 Fulk captured the castle again.
After it was destroyed during the Hundred Years' War, King Louis XI (1461–1483) rebuilt Château de Langeais into what today is one of the best known examples of late medieval architecture. It is especially noted for its monumental and highly decorated chimneypieces. Restored in the late 19th century, Château de Langeais came under the control of the Institut de France, who own the site today. It is listed as a monument historique by the French Ministry of Culture and is open to the public.
History
The 10th century saw the emergence of the castle, and Château de Langeais is generally thought to be the second earliest known; the earliest is Château de Doué-la-Fontaine built by the Count of Blois around 900. The counts of Anjou and Blois had bordering territories and the powerful lords were rivals; as a result the border area is home to some of the earliest known castles. When it was founded in 992 by Fulk Nerra, Count of Anjou, Château de Langeais was made from wood and took the form of a motte-and-bailey. A contemporary chronicler noted that it was built because " had no resting place between Bourgueil and Amboise along the Loire river". It also had the advantage of being 24 km (15 mi) from Tours, a town under the control of Odo I, Count of Blois.
While the land belonged to Fulk, the area was under the control of Odo. When news of the fortification reached Odo he despatched a force to carry out its destruction. The attack was unsuccessful and Fulk reinforced the site, building the stone keep that stands in ruins today. To distract Odo from the construction work, which was complete by 994, Fulk carried out intermittent raids on his lands. It has been suggested that the keep's shallow foundations and thin walls, 2 m (6 ft 7 in) at their thickest and on average 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in), demonstrate that it was built in haste.
Though he was unsuccessful in 992, Odo again tried to capture the castle two years later. This time he called on his Norman, Flemish, Aquitanian allies and the siege of Château de Langeais began in the spring of 994. Fulk led the garrison himself and sent a message to Hugh Capet, King of the Franks, asking for help; and, though Hugh was ill, he promised reinforcements. In the meantime Odo's numbers grew as his allies continued to flock to him. The siege continued into the summer and Fulk began negotiating with Odo. Richer, a contemporary chronicler favourable to Odo, asserted that Fulk agreed to surrender but later reneged, claiming the agreement was not binding, though it is uncertain whether this was the case. However, the Capetian forces arrived before Fulk was forced to surrender. Faced with the king's army, Odo agreed to leave Fulk in peace.
After the siege ended and Odo retreated, Fulk had to deal with hostilities along the western frontier of his lands. Despite Odo's agreement with Hugh, the Count of Blois exploited Fulk's divided attention to install a force at Château de Châteaudun from which he could move to capture Langeais should the opportunity arise. Odo besieged Château de Langeais in 995. The siege continued into the next year, but in March 996 Odo fell ill and died. With their leader dead, the besieging force left Langeais. With his most troublesome enemy dead, Fulk captured Tours which had previously been held by the Count of Blois. After Robert, King of the Franks took control of Tours, Fulk turned to the castles of Langeais, Montsoreau, Montrésor, and Montbazon to defend the Loire Valley.
Hostilities between the counts of Anjou and Blois were renewed in 1016. During the course of the conflict, Fulk lost control of three castles: Passavant was destroyed and Montbazon and Langeais were probably captured. By 1032 Château de Langeais was back under Fulk's control, however it was again taken by the forces of Odo II, Count of Blois. Odo II died in battle in 1037 and was succeeded by his son, Theobald; on receiving the news of his rival's demise, Fulk set about recapturing Château de Langeais. The siege began in the winter of 1037 and in the spring of the following year, with no relief forthcoming, the garrison surrendered. Fulk set his sights on further territorial gains and successfully captured Château de Chinon 22 km (14 mi) away.
Under the Plantagenet kings, the château was fortified and expanded by Richard I of England (King Richard the Lionhearted). However, King Philippe II of France recaptured the château in 1206. Eventually though, during the Hundred Years' War, the English destroyed it. The château was rebuilt about 1465 during the reign of King Louis XI. The great hall of the château was the scene of the marriage of Anne of Brittany to King Charles VIII on December 6, 1491 that made the permanent union of Brittany and France.
In 1886, Jacques Siegfried bought Château Langeais and began a restoration program. He installed an outstanding collection of tapestries and furnishings and bequeathed the château to the Institut de France which still owns it today. The château is open to the public. It is listed as a monument historique by the French Ministry of Culture.
Layout
According to contemporaneous chronicler Richer, the castle built by Foulques Nerra in the 990s consisted of a tower and a surrounding enclosure. The 10th-century keep still stands, albeit in a ruinous state. It is the earliest example of Romanesque architecture in the region. It is uncertain where the stone used in construction was quarried. A detailed study has been done on the cost of construction of Langeais tower. The stone tower is 16 metres (52 ft) high, 17.5m wide, and 10m long with walls averaging 1.5m. The walls contain 1,200 cubic metres (42,000 cu ft) of stone and have a total surface (both inside and out) of 1,600 square metres (17,000 sq ft). The tower is estimated to have taken 83,000 average working days to complete, most of which was unskilled labor. The wall enclosing the keep stretched for some 250 m (820 ft). The interior rooms are richly decorated.

Château de Langeais

The Château de Luynes is a castle located in Luynes, Indre-et-Loire, France.
History
Built as a medieval fortress in the 13th century, The castle is today a grand manor house on a rocky promontory overlooking the val de Loire, and has been subject to registration as an historical monument since July 17, 1926.
The entry in the Monuments historiques register, describes the castle as a quadrangular surface at the edge of a spur. The most important part of the defences is located on the West... four cylindrical towers which ... date from the 13th century and 15th century.
The castle was substanitially rebuilt in the 15th century, the current windows replaced primitive arrow slits and the wall between the towers was perforated by mullioned windows, evidence then of building next to this part of the enclosure. The South curtain wall is today replaced by a terrace and an outer defensive wall with two small round towers can still be discerned. In the 17th Century a pavilion, was constructed at the back of the Southeast Tower.

Château de Luynes

The château de Rochecotte is a late 18th-century château located in the French village of Saint-Patrice, near Langeais, in Indre-et-Loire. It is known for its various owners and their many successive rebuilds.
The parent of one of its owners, Boni de Castellane, described it as : "A grand Louis XVI style château - halfway up a hill dominating the Loire valley – lacking neither charm nor originality. It resembles an Italian villa, with superimposed terraces, from which the view extends to the blue and grey horizon, landscapes from old paintings."
In a letter from Dino to de Barante of 5 July 1828, she writes "I have a true passion for Rochecotte; to me, it is the most beautiful view and the most beautiful country in the world; at last this is an air which makes me live lightly and then I arrange, I return, I embellish, I appropriate... I took up country life to the letter."
Talleyrand and the duchess of Dino
Originally, the château belonged to the comte de Rochecotte, who became one of the leaders of the second Chouannerie in Maine and was executed under the French Directory, in the Champ-de-Mars, in Paris.
On 30 April 1828, one of the later owners, the chevalier René de La Selle de Ligné, sold it to Dorothée de Courlande, duchess of Dino, for 400,000 francs, then a considerable sum. According to Jean-Luc Péchinot, "she appreciated its site and its superimposed terraces opening out onto vast horizons (...) she undertook great building works".
The Castellanes
In the grounds of the chateau is a mausoleum to Antonia Terry y Sanchez of Cuba, the mother of Countess Stanislas de Castellane (Natica Terry), sister-in-law of Boni de Castellane and mother of Emilio Terry.

Château de Rochecotte

Ussé is a castle in the Indre-et-Loire département, in France. The stronghold at the edge of the Chinon forest overlooking the Indre Valley was first fortified in the eleventh century by the Norman seigneur of Ussé, Gueldin de Saumur, who surrounded the fort with a palisade on a high terrace. The site passed to the Comte de Blois, who rebuilt in stone.
In the fifteenth century, the ruined castle of Ussé was purchased by Jean V de Bueil, a captain-general of Charles VII who became seigneur of Ussé in 1431 and began rebuilding it in the 1440s; his son Antoine de Bueil married in 1462 Jeanne de Valois, the biological daughter of Charles VII and Agnès Sorel, who brought as dowry 40000 golden écus. Antoine was heavily in debt and in 1455, sold the château to Jacques d’Espinay, son of a chamberlain to the Duke of Brittany and himself chamberlain to the king; Espinay built the chapel, completed by his son Charles in 1612, in which the Flamboyant Gothic style is mixed with new Renaissance motifs, and began the process of rebuilding the fifteenth-century château that resulted in the sixteenth-seventeenth century aspect of the structure to be seen today.
In the seventeenth century Louis I de Valentinay, comptroller of the royal household, demolished the north range of buildings in order to open the interior court to the spectacular view over the parterre terrace, to a design ascribed to André Le Nôtre. Valentinay's son-in-law was the military engineer Vauban, who visited Ussé on numerous occasions. The tradition maintained at Ussé is that this was the castle Charles Perrault had in mind when writing "The Sleeping Beauty"[citation needed] . Later Ussé passed to the Rohan. In 1802 Ussé was purchased by the duc de Duras; as early as March 1813, low-key meetings were held at Ussé among a group of Bourbon loyalists, who met to sound out the possibilities of a Bourbon Restoration: such men as Trémouille, duc de Fitzjames, the prince de Polignac, Ferrand, Montmorency and the duc de Rochefoucault attended. Here later François-René de Chateaubriand worked on his Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe as the guest of duchesse Claire de Duras.
In 1885 the comtesse de la Rochejaquelein bequeathed Ussé to her great-nephew, the comte de Blacas. Today the château belongs to his descendent Casimir de Blacas d' Aulps the 7th Duke of Blacas.
Famed for its picturesque aspect, Ussé was the subject of a French railroad poster issued by the Chemin de Fer de Paris à Orléans in the 1920s and was one of several that inspired Walt Disney in the creation of many of the Disney Castles.
Ussé was classified as a monument historique in 1931 by the French Ministry of Culture.

Château d'Ussé

The Château de Tours is a castle located in Tours, Indre-et-Loire, France.
Built in the 11th century, the building displayed an architecture of the Carolingian period, and was the residence of the Lords of France.
Until the 2000s, the Royal Castle of Tours was used as an aquarium where about 1,500 fish of 200 different species could be seen. It also served as Grévin museum. The castle was classified as monument historique on 20 August 1913.
Currently, the building houses contemporary exhibitions of paintings and photographs, including works by Joan Miró, Daniel Buren, Nadar, and the workshop of Tours history where archeological and historical documents, models, audio-visual films on the history of Tours, etc., are shown.