We got moving early on the 22nd. I got the car out of the underground garage, and we set out eastward on the Autoroute heading for Blois. From there we followed smaller roads to the great palace of Chambord. This was Francis I's personal dream house, and he poured treasure into the project — and then only got to live there about three months.
Chambord's position reflects some of Francis's geopolitical ambitions. He was pushing his claim to various Italian kingdoms, especially Milan, but other major powers in the area were trying to stop him. As is customary with Renaissance politics, they all switched sides and made temporary coalitions so that at any given time Francis might be allied with the Papal States or the Holy Roman Empire, or he might be fighting them. But all this activity in Italy made it useful for the King's center of government to be located south of the Loire, saving days of time for couriers from Italy. Also, in an era when wealth still equated more or less directly to food, putting the court right in the middle of France's breadbasket was good policy.
Anyway, the chateau itself is immense and fantastic. Here's a picture.
Inside, there's no attempt at consistency. Some of the rooms are fitted out as they might have been in Francis's day, others replicate Louis XIV's era, or the days of the exiled Polish King Stanislaus I, or the tenure of Marshal Saxe, or the last private owner, the Comte de Chambord.
That last figure is a bit obscure, but he's worth learning about. He was the last serious candidate for King of France. In the 1880s, after the fiasco of the Franco-Prussian War, the Royalists had a solid majority in the Assembly and finally managed to agree on a single candidate, the Bourbon Henri V, who used the title Comte de Chambord when he didn't want any snickering.
Henri's moment had arrived. And then he blew it all by issuing a proclamation from the palace of Chambord stating that he would never accept the throne if France didn't go back to the old royal banner of white with lilies. The French — including most of the Royalists in the government — decided that the Comte de Chambord was a fool and they'd be better off sticking to the Third Republic. Henri went back home to Austria and France has remained a Republic ever since.
The guidebooks strongly insinuate that the cool double-spiral staircase in the center of the house was designed by Leonardo da Vinci, but they can't actually state it as fact because there's no record. Having climbed up and down it I can attest that it almost certainly was designed by Leonardo because he made the stair riser height inconveniently low to get the right curve of the spiral staircase. That seems very like him.
Having worked up a considerable appetite, we drove to the nearby village of Montlivault for a big fancy lunch at the Michelin-starred restaurant Ezia. It's a nice unpretentious place in a quiet little town. Here's our menu:
Wrasse (it's a fish) with artichoke and a basil cream sauce
Braised carrots with shellfish
Fish (I don't recall what kind) with eggplant
Smoked duck breast or Pigeon (Diane had the duck, I had the pigeon) with beets, rhubarb and juniper
Goat cheese mousse
Elderflower, cucumber, and gin sorbets
All excellent, and we paired them with local wines but I didn't note what we ordered.
Full and happy, we drove over to Blois, which has another famous chateau, but we ignored that completely. Instead we went across the square from the chateau to the Maison de Magie — a museum devoted to local boy Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin, the famous stage magician and inventor.
Every thirty minutes, giant dragon heads emerge from the museum, but unfortunately my video is too large for me to embed here. So instead here's a link to someone else's video on YouTube.
Inside there's exhibits of stage illusions, three different theaters where magic acts perform, a collection of vintage posters, and lots of stuff about the life and career of M. Robert-Houdin.
Here is one illusion, featuring the disembodied head of Dr. Diane A. Kelly.
We drove back to Tours the slow way, following the Loire, and had a light dinner across the street from our hotel before tumbling into bed early. We were going to be getting up before dawn and wanted our sleep.
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