{"id":1976,"date":"2021-11-29T14:31:38","date_gmt":"2021-11-29T14:31:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=1976"},"modified":"2021-11-29T14:31:38","modified_gmt":"2021-11-29T14:31:38","slug":"chateau-de-chenonceau","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=1976","title":{"rendered":"Ch\u00e2teau de Chenonceau"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are many wonderful reasons to visit the Loire valley.\u00a0 It\u2019s close enough to Paris that you can make a day trip of a visit there.\u00a0 For us wine enthusiasts, there\u2019s Vouvray, Chinon, Sancerre and Muscadet to occupy our tasting hours.\u00a0 Those wines go well with the Touraine cuisine (named after the central town of Tours).\u00a0 And there\u2019s the history, so much of it, best exemplified by the castles that line the river Loire and other streams nearby.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Photo courtesy of YouTube.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the 15th<\/sup> and 16th<\/sup> centuries, French monarchs and nobles preferred to avoid the hoi polloi<\/em> of Paris and so built magnificent ch\u00e2teaux from which they could both rule and enjoy themselves.\u00a0 There are many to visit, including Chambord, Blois and Amboise.\u00a0 If you only have the time to visit one, we recommend that it be the Ch\u00e2teau de Chenonceau.<\/p>\n

You enter the grounds down a long all\u00e9e of plane trees until, seeming suddenly, a fairy castle appears before you.\u00a0 That\u2019s the entrance to the ch\u00e2teau, where you can and should sign up for a tour, available in many languages including English.\u00a0 A guide will show you around the rooms, point out some interesting information about the gardens and explain the history of Chenonceau.<\/p>\n

The ch\u00e2teau that\u2019s there today wasn\u2019t the original.\u00a0 That one was burned down and replaced by a nobleman in generally the form we see the front of it today in the early 16th<\/sup> century.\u00a0 King Francois I seized it a few decades later.\u00a0 His son, Henri II, set it aside as a love nest for his mistress, Diane de Poitiers.\u00a0 This didn\u2019t much please his wife, Catherine de Medici, so she kicked out Diane and expanded the ch\u00e2teau to cross the river Cher.\u00a0 [As you tour Chenonceau, you can see two gardens out the windows.\u00a0 One was Diane\u2019s, the other one Catherine\u2019s.\u00a0 The mistress got the better of the gardening competition.]<\/p>\n

Because the ch\u00e2teau spans the river, it was used by Jews and other refugees from German-occupied France during the Second World War.\u00a0 The Cher was the dividing line between the Nazis and Vichy France to the south.\u00a0 Escapees would enter the front of the ch\u00e2teau and sneak out the back.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Photo courtesy of The Local France.<\/em><\/p>\n

Perhaps the most unique and certainly the most romantic aspect of a visit to Chenonceau is to rent a little boat and row along the Cher, under the ch\u00e2teau<\/em>.\u00a0 There\u2019s no other castle in all of Europe where you can do that!<\/p>\n

The architecture of Chenonceau combines Gothic and Renaissance elements, so viewing it is another way you can experience history there.\u00a0 Most of the rooms in the ch\u00e2teau are decorated so you can give yourself a sense of how royalty treated itself in the early Renaissance.\u00a0 As Mel Brooks put it, it was good to be the king.\u00a0 Now, of course, Chenonceau is a historic monument.\u00a0 Wars and revolutions have not dimmed the elegance and attraction of this great castle.\u00a0 Other than Versailles, it\u2019s the most visited ch\u00e2teau in France.\u00a0 When you are in the Loire valley for wine tasting, leave yourself some time for castling, too, especially at Chenonceau.<\/p>\n

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There are many wonderful reasons to visit the Loire valley.\u00a0 It\u2019s close enough to Paris that you can make a day trip of a visit there.\u00a0 For us wine enthusiasts, there\u2019s Vouvray, Chinon, Sancerre and Muscadet to occupy our tasting hours.\u00a0 Those wines go well with the Touraine cuisine (named after the central town of … Continue reading Ch\u00e2teau de Chenonceau<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1976"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1976"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1979,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1976\/revisions\/1979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}