And then I met Prince Charming...

So this past weekend we visited the Chateaux (castles) in the Loire Valley! We visited four castles - Chaumont-sur-Loire (picture to the left), Chenonceau, Chambord, and Blois - and they were all amazing, and they were also all very different! When I came to France for the first time when I was 14, I visited Chenonceau and Chambord, but at this point my French skills were not very good so at Chenonceau our guide spoke English and at Chambord we didn't have a guide. I found from this visit that guides have such a huge influence on how much you enjoy the castle, because when I was 14 I hated Chambord because it was just an empty castle with nothing very interesting to look at, but visiting this time and having a visite guidée made it one of my favorites. I will explain more about Chambord and our amazing guide later one. Also visiting these castles again with guides in French made me realize how far my French language has come from the time I was 14 and from the time I arrived in France. When I was 14 I obviously would have been completely confused by a guide who only spoke to me in French. But there has even been a difference from the time I arrived because when we had guides in Paris, I had to concentrate to understand what they were saying and by the end of the guide I would have a splitting headache from thinking so much. Now, I can listen to the guide in French and have no problems understanding at all which is so satisfying!
OK but now on to describing these castles. So the first one we visited was Blois which was in the same city that we were staying in, and the city is also named Blois - how handy! It was crazy that we were able to walk 10 minutes from our hotel and end up at a castle! This castle was built by many kings in many different centuries, our guide told us that you can turn in a circle around the courtyard and see 4 different centuries and 4 different architectural styles! It is very rare to have all the different architectural styles preserved, and we only saw this at Blois. The first style of architecture is the Gothic style from the 13th century - the only part left of this style of architecture is one room, but it is the biggest remaining room in the Gothic style in all of France. The second architectural style was the Flamboyant Gothic style which you can see to your left in the part that was constructed by Louis XII from 1498-1503. This is the part of the castle that houses the Museum today, but it used to be the part that held the royal apartments. The third style was the Renaissance, which can be seen in the part constructed by Francois I from 1515-1520. This part is much more decorative and it also has a beautiful outside staircase (shown below) which is very well known. A similar staircase is also at Chambord which makes sense since Chambord was also constructed during the reign of Francois I.The fourth style is the Classical style which you can see up in the first picture of Blois, right above the Flamboyant Gothic example. This was constructed under Gaston d'Orleans from 1635-1638. Gaston was not a king, he was the brother to Louis XIII and was a duke. This part is also very ornate and is the largest wall in the courtyard. This was crazy because all this information was just in the courtyard of the castles, and as we went through the castle we learned even more about the kings who lived there. An assassination took place in the king's bedroom. Henri III, king at the time, was losing power to the Duke of Guise as a result of a religious struggle. Back then I guess the way to maintain your power was just to kill off the opposition, so Henri III invited the duke to dinner to discuss some important matters. He then had him taken into his bedroom where the Duke was cornered by 12 men and killed. However then later on Henri III was killed too, so I guess he didn't maintain his power for too long. We ended the tour in a big room, which is to the left, which held the throne of the kings. Apparently this room has also been used for lots of films, and not just for films of kings and queens, but also in films of the National Assembly because there was enough space to fit long tables. That pretty much sums up Blois, so now on to the next castle, Chambord!
Chambord was probably the best castle we visited because we had the best guide I have ever had in my life. He was funny, dynamic, and so interesting. He turned our tour into a mystery and we discovered the story of Chambord as the tour went on. The reason he did this was because Chambord is a huge mystery; it is the largest castle in the Loire Valley and the most spectacular but all the rooms on the inside were completely empty. Also Francois I, who constructed it, only visited it 4 times for a period of 10 days. It is also unknown why Francois I decided to construct it and there is not proof of who came up with the architectural design. However they do have some really good hypotheses and have also recently discovered some information in the last year or so that helps to prove the hypotheses. Our guide told us first that the overall layout of the castle is almost exactly the same as St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. This was because Francois I was trying to assert his power and prove that he was just as important as the Pope. The reason that the guide told us that all the rooms were empty was because every time Francois I visited Chambord, he and his court brought all their belongings with them. They brought the beds, the furniture, the food, and set it all up for each of the 10 day stays. The court of Francois I was also something like 6000-10000 people who all would stay at Chambord while the king was there. This is also the reason why Francois I had to have the double helix staircase built; since there were so many people, one staircase would just not have worked. There was a rumor that he constructed it because he didn't want his mistress and his wife to have to walk on the same staircase, but according to our guide this rumor is not true, and it was just built because of the massive amount of people who needed to get up and down the stairs. Another interesting fact about the staircase is that they are pretty sure Leonardo Da Vinci helped to design it. Even though he died before the staircase was built they later found in his drawings pictures of double helix, triple helix and even octo helix staircases that he was working on designing. This also makes sense because Da Vinci was a close friend of Francois I, and Francois I was the reason why Da Vinci moved to the Loire Valley to work.
Ok so those are the big ideas of Chambord, but we also learned about the symbols in Chambord. First, the Salamander appears EVERYWHERE in this castle which is because this was the animal that represented Francois I. In a lot of the castles there were animals, because in Blois there was the porcupine since that represented Louis XII. The porcupine was also found at Chambord too. There was a lot of different meanings with this salamander throughout the castle. First of all, almost every salamander had a baby salamander. This was because Francois I wanted to have a son so he had someone to pass the throne onto. This was a legitimate worry for Francois I because the reason Francois I was king was because Louis XII didn't have a son and there were no sons to rule until they got to Francois I, the 21st cousin of Louis XII. Francois I believed that if he put symbols around the castle of him having successful heirs - i.e. little baby salamanders - then he would have a son. There are only two other symbols I remember from the tour, one was an F for Francois I with a crown that was not the normal king crown around it. Instead of being the normal crown it was the crown of an emperor. This seems weird since he was the King of France and not an Emperor, but the reason this symbol exists has a lot to do with why Chambord was built. While Francois I was king, the Emperor of the empire that stretched across a large part of Western Europe died. This meant that a new emperor needed to be named, Francois I wanted to be the emperor as did the King of Spain and the Monarch in Germany. So there was a vote but it was tampered with and so it ended up being the Monarch of Germany instead of Francois I. If Francois I had been Emperor then Chambord would have been the capital of the Empire which is also why it was so grand. Francois I also felt that he should have been the Emperor and was cheated out of the position so he put the F with an Emperor Crown around it to show that it didn't matter that he wasn't Emperor since as the King of France he was better and more powerful than the Emperor anyway.
The last symbol we talked about (that I can remember) in Chambord was the reversal of the F at the top of the castle. The reason the F is reversed is because this was the part of the castle where God would be looking down on, and Francois I wanted to make sure that God was able to see the letter representing his name and the Salamander from the sky in the right direction. Our guide told us many more things, but it is far too much to put in here because this post is already getting quite long and I have two more castles to talk about. But if you ever find yourself in France, I would highly recommend visiting this castle!
Because this post is getting so long I'm going to briefly talk about the last two castles! These two last castles are much more interesting on the outside and have less history on the inside. They were amazing though but through Chaumont-sur-Loire we didn't have a guide, so I don't know a lot about it, and through Chenonceau we listened to audio guides instead of having a tour guide. So Chaumont-sur-Loire, which is the castle at the top of this post and to your right is your typical fairytale princess castle, and we also decided it looked a lot like the castles in the Disney Movies. We had all been claiming different castles as our own throughout the weekend, and I claimed this one as my own, especially since it was one of Catherine de Medici's castles, and there was "Catherine's Room." This was probably my favorite castle from the outside because it was just so picturesque, and it also had a very nice garden and stables. It was the smallest castle we visited but it was also nice because we had the castle completely to ourselves. This castle also looks out directly onto the Loire River which was beautiful!
The last castle we visited on our trip was Chenonceau, which was my favorite castle the last time I visited France. I think this castle is a much better castle to visit in the spring because a huge part of the beauty of Chenonceau is the gardens which aren't in bloom this time of year. But even though the gardens weren't in bloom it was still gorgeous from the outside. Also one of the best parts about this castle is all the rooms are set up as if nothing had changed. I love castles like this because it makes it so much easier to imagine what the castle was like back when the kings and queens lived there. We also went through the labyrinth which was fun, and something I didn't get to do last time I visited - and we were extremely lucky with the weather because this is the only castle where it started to rain just a little bit. We literally visited castles on the perfect days at the perfect times because after we left to go back to Dijon, our whole train ride was in the rain.
That pretty much sums up our trip to the Loire Valley, which I don't think I mentioned before but it was an excursion that is included in our program so we go with our whole group from UPS and our director Nathalie. It was an amazing trip and I can't wait for our next excursion in 3 weeks to Alsace! In the meantime, I am traveling to a little town called Besancon this weekend just for a day, and then next weekend I am going to Brussels!!!!
A Bientot!