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Royal Touraine France

By Tom Hodgman, Off The Beaten Path, LLC

Sticks and stones and dungeon bones

“Help, help, I’m trapped. Let me out!” a voice mutters raspy and wretched, grown weak from privation. The whispers issue from behind the grate of a cage designed to hold a single, short outlaw. It looks like a man-sized Rubik’s cube with a slot in the door to pass daily gruel.

The “fillette,” as this cage is called, once held its own inventor, the king’s chaplain at the time, a cardinal and secretary of state under the ruthless liege Louis XI, King of Touraine and king of what little of France that was not still occupied by the English army in the 15^th century.

We execute merciful justice when Karen steps forward to release her mother, Jane, from confinement. It takes the full weight of both to hoist open the thick oak and steel door. We were all, I think, secretly relieved that we didn’t have to call the curator to help. Karen scolds, “Lady Marguerite, you promise now to behave?”

We return squinting from dark treasons into the warm reflection of the high sandstone walls in the cloistered prison yard of the Dungeon of Loches. Our guided tour group is small, intimate and apparently vulnerable to eerie sensations. We shake off the frissons of our visit so far on this late spring day in a village deep in the heart of the Loire Valley chateau country, France.

Top to bottom, we have visited the 16^th-century subterranean prison vaults of François I, which was tunneled five levels deep for political detainees, a 15^th-century torture room with a rich assortment of devices and racks for the encouragement of confessions, and most impressively, the 100-foot walls of the ruin of the 11^th-century castellated dungeon of the Black Falcon, Foulques III Nerra, the feudal count who started this enduring array. We have had a captivating narrative from our guide and tour organizer that certifies the dominion of misery in this medieval place.

A Clear View

Atop the 15^th-century Louis XI Tower. the impressions of menace contrast sharply with what we survey as a parting panorama. We are encircled by the pastoral meanderings of the river Indre, the rolling countryside of grapes and poplar, and the half-timbered dwellings of the sleepy village of Loches. We have seized the day this first morning of our week’s visit to Touraine.

We are a diverse group. Our guide and tour organizer is an astute adventuress, avid Francophile (Franco-American at that) and a humming human dynamo. My fellow clients are a family of two daughters and a mom, all three willful, discriminating Americans wishing to experience the Touraine region of France categorically, in a week. I am an expat Yank and London resident who enjoys exploring all things European.

After the tower, we disperse into the village to hunt lunch. We separate down the cobblestones under the Porte Royale, the main gate from the inner ramparts of the chateau and dungeon. I dawdle for pictures and browse pastry windows, our group’s voices scattering down the narrow lanes.

A Royal Neighborhood

The centuries that have brought the exquisiteness of Gothic and Renaissance architecture to Chateau Amboise embellish a rocky spur that has supplied defenses since the days of a permanent Roman encampment (3^rd and 4^th centuries A.D.). Once Rome had abandoned the empire, Clovis, first king of the Franks, bargained a peace agreement with the Visigoths at the foot of its steep outcrop (late 5^th century). Then, during a 250-year period following the death of Charlemagne, marauding Normans managed to destroy three times another fortress that had stood here.

Peacefully, our guided tour begins with the tiny royal chapel of St Hubert, patron saint of the hunter. The carving in the tympan over the entry door depicts the blessing of a menagerie, which is a buck and wild boar gathered tamely before the huntsman and his keenly focused dogs, horse and falcon. Inside, the gothic frieze by Flemish sculptors renders amazing unsupported volumes of creamy sandstone aptly called stone lace.

To the left of the altar, a plaque confirms the final resting place of Leonardo Da Vinci. The artist and inventor spent his last four years under the employment of François I, the Renaissance playboy king. In gratitude, Leonardo donated the Mona Lisa to him (the painting, that is). The nearby Clos Lucé of Amboise was Leonardo’s residence for that time and now serves as a museum of his inventions.

Nicknamed as first of “The Chateau of the Loire,” Chateau Amboise amalgamates several generations of French royalty. Its present-day appearance, which is only a remnant of an extensive 15^th-century royal neighborhood, maintains a substantial chateau and this diminutive chapel.

The royal quarters are also flanked by two massive horse towers, named after hermit monks, Minimes and Minault. As two impregnable stumps of darkening stone, their helical ramps, measuring 30 feet in diameter, were the primary means of ascending by horse and carriage the 80 feet from the village level to the plateau. The natural fortifications are completed on a third side by a deep trench dating from a Roman installation. It is bordered by a wide blocage constructed wall.

In the honey tones of the tuffeau sandstone, the chateau represents, we are told, a symbol of the growing confidence of this nation during the 15^th and 16^th centuries. The main wing of the chateau built by Charles VIII was erected at the very transition between Gothic and Renaissance styles. As Italy was the wellspring of French Renaissance architecture, amongst the spoils of the Italian campaigns of 1494-95 came 22 Italian artisans and sculptors who arrived as Da Vinci would, with sought after design and building skills.

On one hand, the vaulted spaces of the gothic wing reveal how the stage of construction was nearly complete by the kings’ return from the Italian war. On the other, the Italian carving methods are understood to have inspired some of the façade work. The exterior overlooking the river flaunts an ecstatic level of ornamentation.

The adjacent wing of the chateau, begun by Charles’ immediate successor, contains Renaissance ideals. It is a composite of the cousin kings of Charles, Louis XII and François I. The style offers more comfortable and human interior spaces. The exterior is substantially the result of a remodel undertaken by François. who added the monumental dormers and stylish pilasters.

Descending to the village streets of Amboise we ramble the remains of the day through a maze of cobbled streets lined with cafés, confectionaries and shops of regional wares. Along the levee we take a sublime sunset stroll, inhaling the Loire’s thick, drowsy air. After wine and a meal, we judge another rung can be notched in the evolution from ancient to contemporary pleasures.

Sandwich of Centuries

Roman Empire, grand migrations, Norman invasions, holy crusades, 100 Year War, Italian campaigns, Salic rights, croque monsieur and chenin blanc at Place de la Fountaine: I am rereading short-hand notes from day three of our Touraine tour. Over late lunch I breathlessly replay the day’s travels.

The morning brought the blushing exuberance of the intact Renaissance gardens and maze of Chateau Villandry (world class). We charged next the austere medieval site of 1^st millennium Franco-Anglo disputes at Chateau Langeais (drawbridge, spiked assommoir, mâchicoulis). Next, our group has arrived by chauffered van at the western edge of the Touraine region and this endlessly fascinating village of Chinon.

Here, Roman legions and Plantagenet heirs were among the first in a royal procession to the ranks of medieval French kings. They made secure the palisade fortresses overlooking the cyan blue River Vienne. The walk from the extensive fortifications of Chateau Chinon passes a sturdy 1^st millennium Romanesque collégial, rafts of leaning half-timbered homes and stone bourgeois townhouses, and for the literary, the painted cellars extolled by a thirsty François Rabelais, born nearby.

The most precious legend of Chinon describes the young Joan of Arc arriving her in early 1429. Having heard of her exalted assertions, the king and his court enact a ruse to test her authenticity. Upon her entrance she is presented not to Charles VII, heir to the throne, but an imposter masquerading as the dauphin. For the moment, the king stands demurely to one side speculating on the shepherd girl’s intentions.

By some miraculous ability, Joan is never fooled. She turns away from the impersonator without delay and succeeds in discovering the dauphin where he stands disguised behind others. She kneels before him and utters her pledge “with the King of Heaven to mandate [him] as sacred and destined to be crowned King of France.” Within two months, she has lead the French army to break the English siege of Orléans. Following which, the occupiers are eventually purged from France. By July, the dauphin is crowned King of France.

Mining with the tongue

Food symbolizes a great deal in France. It is not surprising that we eventually discover an association between the simple glass of wine that we enjoy each dinner and the extraordinary history of the Touraine dungeons, castles and chateaux of Loire Valley.

The tuffeau sandstone of the Touraine cliffs was quarried, carved and assembled in order to construct these grand domiciles and defenses. A Touraine wine correspondingly reaches its perfectly light and refreshingly convivial flavor growing in this very same minerally soil.

And so, as we chatter and yak one dinner late in the week, we contemplate an enticing reminder of things we have seen during our previous days’ visits. We are inspired to recollect our ramblings through the architectural luxuries and visions of beauty, the prosperity and upheavals of this place. All that is illustrious in this region’s history charms us to savor the cool sip from a goblet of local wine. The ancient villages, fortresses and chateaux seem distilled in it.