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Les
Chateaux of the Loire
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One of France's most famous regions is the Loire Valley, the former playground of the
French monarchs, whose traces and grand palaces attract visitors today. The
'centre' of France from Chartres to Châteauroux and from Tours
to Bourges
includes the départements of Eure-et-Loir,
Loiret, Loir-et-Cher, Indre, Indre-et-Loire and Cher.
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The Central Loire
includes the famous Châteaux country, perhaps the region most visited by
foreign tourists to France.
Through it flows a part of the Loire River,
the longest river in France,
and considered to be its most capricious, often reducing to a mere trickle
of water in a bed of sand. It has been called a 'useless' great river,
because it drives no turbines or mill wheels and offers few navigable
waterways. It could be said that the Loire
serves only beauty and each of its tributaries has its own character.
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These photos
from Chateau Cheverny shows how beautifully
preserved the interiors have been kept with a painstaking attention to
detail ensuring each room takes you a step back into history.
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The Cher is a quiet, slow-moving river,
flowing calmly through grassy meadows and mature forests. The château of Chenonceau stands quite literally on the river; a
working mill in the early medieval period when the Cher
flowed more vigorously, it was transformed into perhaps the most graceful
of all French châteaux, its court rooms running clear from one bank to the
other on a row of delicate arches.Chenonceau's
development owed much to a succession of beautiful and powerful noblewomen,
and its charm is of an undeniably feminine nature.
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The Indre is a river of calm reflections. Lilies abound and
weeping willows sway on its banks. The château at Azay-le-Rideau was designed to make full use of
these qualities and stands beside several small man-made lakes, each
reflecting a different aspect of the building. Water is moved to and from
the river and between the lakes through a series of gurgling channels. The
water gardens and its reflections of the intricately carved exterior more
than compensate for the rather dull interior.
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Chambord, several miles south of the Loire, is the most substantial of the great châteaux.
Standing in a moat in the centre of a vast lawn bordered by forests, the
body of the building possesses a majestic symmetry. In contrast, the roofscape is a mad jumble of eccentric chimneys and
apartments. Some have attributed the bizarre double-helix staircase to Leonardo da Vinci. The five
châteaux described in outline above are generally ranked highest amongst the
Loire châteaux and form the core of most
organised tours.
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There are,
of course, dozens more that can be visited and it is even possible to stay
overnight in several. Besides châteaux, there is much else of interest in
the Loire Valley and surrounding districts.
There are magnificent 13th-century cathedrals in Chartres
and Tours,
as well as abbeys and mansions and charming riverside towns and villages.
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Other places
of outstanding interest include Orléans, famous
for its associations with Jeanne d'Arc, with a
beautiful cathedral, the Musée des Beaux Arts and
16th-century Hôtel de Ville; and Bourges,
a 15th-century town, complete with old houses, museums and the Cathedral of
St Etienne. The charming little town of Loches, southeast of Tours, has a fine
château and an interesting walled medieval quarter. It was in the heartland
of the Touraine
where the true cuisine of France
developed (Touraine
was given the name 'the garden
of France').
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