When France’s Renaissance kings wanted to escape the noisome urban sprawl of Paris, it was the Loire Valley they chose as their retreat. Where the French royalty went, their courtiers followed for fear of losing partiality, building chateaux close to the king’s.
The Loire Valley is a living laboratory: Leonardo da Vinci designed his wackiest inventions here, and kings made it the crucible of the French Renaissance. Clinging to the riverbanks, the Chateau de Chambord and its neighbors great and small tell the fabulous story of this artistic effervescence – also expressed by gardens such as those at Chaumond-sur-Loire which is both a chateau and the landscape laboratory of the future.