Chenonceaux Hotels

Chateau de Chenonceau sits peacefully on the Cher River. The gardens are very traditional French style - plenty of small meticulously shaped shrubs - and do give a lovely backdrop to the chateau. One highlight of our visit was taking a boat along the Cher, although we missed the light show (summer only) which people tell us is very impressive. Château de Chenonceau, near the small village of Chenonceaux, in the Indre-et-Loire département of the Loire Valley in France, was built on the site of an old mill on the River Cher. The original manor was torched by Royal troops in 1411 to punish owner Jean Marques for an act of sedition. He rebuilt a castle and fortified mill on the site in the 1430s. Subsequently, his deeply indebted heir Pierre Marques sold the castle to Thomas Bohier, Chamberlain for King Charles VIII of France in 1513. Bohier destroyed the existing castle and built an entirely new residence between 1515 and 1521; the work was sometimes overseen by his wife Catherine Briçonnet, who delighted in hosting French nobility, including King François I on two occasions. Eventually, the château was seized from Bohier's son by François I for unpaid debts to the Crown, and after François' death in 1547, King Henri II offered the château as a gift to his mistress, Diane de Poitiers who became fervently attached to the château and its view along the river. She would have the arched bridge constructed, joining the château to its opposite bank. She 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.