Rue nationale, framed by the town gate Porte de l’Amasse in the historic district of Amboise, Loire Valley, France
Some background information:
The town of Amboise is located on the banks of the Loire River in the administrative region of Centre-Val de Loire and has more than 12,500 residents. In pre-Roman times there used to be a Gallic oppidum on the site, which was taken over by the Romans later. Today, Amboise is mainly renowned for its beautiful old town, but also for its altogether three châteaus: the Château royal d'Amboise, the Château Château du Clos Lucé (the former residence of Leonardo da Vinci) and the Château Gaillard.
A forth château, the Château de Chanteloup was destroyed by an act of incendiarism in 1823 and never rebuild. Only a part of the garden and some of its features have survived, of which the most important is the Pagoda of Chanteloup. But both region and town are also renowned for their cuisine. How about a poultry ballotine, a slice of Sainte Maure goat cheese or rillettes de canard together with a glass of sweet white wine from the Tourraine wine-growing region? That’s French art de vivre, to enjoy without any moderation.
The strategic qualities of the site were already recognised in pre-Roman times, when it was used to build a Gallic oppidum. In the 9th century the oppidum was converted into a castle by Ingelgarius, viscount of Orléans, who controlled the area after having married Adelais, a member of the family that controlled it previously. Ingelgarius was succeeded by his son Fulk the Red, who later became Count of Anjou. After Fulk had expanded his territory, Amboise, Loches, and Villentrois formed the core of his possessions, but Amboise still lay on the eastern frontier of his holdings.
In 987, the town and its castle descended through the family to Fulk III (also known as Fulk the Black). Fulk had to contend with the ambitions of Odo I, Count of Blois, who wanted to expand his own territory into Anjou. He attempted to isolate and threaten the castles of Amboise and Loches by erecting fortifications at Chaumont and Montsoreau while garrisoning the town of Saint-Aignan.
Expanded and improved in the course of the centuries, the Château d'Amboise was seized by King Charles VII of France in 1434, after its owner, Louis d'Amboise, Viscount of Thours, was convicted of plotting and condemned to be executed. However, the king pardoned him but took his castle. Once in royal hands, the château became a favourite of French kings, from Louis XI to Francis I.
Charles VIII decided to rebuild it extensively, beginning in 1492 at first in the French late Gothic Flamboyant style and then after 1495 employing two Italian mason-builders, Domenico da Cortona and Fra Giocondo, who provided at Amboise some of the first Renaissance decorative motifs seen in French architecture. Following the Italian War from 1494 to 1495, Charles turned the Château d'Amboise into "the first Italianate palace in France". In 1498, Charles died at Château d'Amboise after hitting his head on a door lintel.
During the first years of the reign of King Francis I the château reached the pinnacle of its glory. In 1515, Leonardo da Vinci came to the palace as a guest of the king. He lived and worked in the nearby Château du Clos Lucé, just a few hundred metres away from Château d'Amboise and connected to it by an underground passage. After his death on death on 2nd May 1519, da Vinci was buried in the Chapel of St. Florentin, originally located approximately 100 metres northeast of the Chapel of St. Hubert that lays within the stone fortifications of the Château d'Amboise, where his remains were brought to in 1874.
In 1560, during the French Wars of Religion, a conspiracy by members of the Huguenot House of Bourbon against the House of Guise that virtually ruled France in the name of the young Francis II was uncovered by the Count of Guise and stifled by a series of hangings, which took a month to carry out. By the time it was finished, 1200 Protestants were gibbetted, strung from the town walls, hung from the iron hooks that held pennants and tapestries on festive occasions and from the very balcony of the royal rooms. The court soon had to leave the town because of the smell of corpses. Those events went down in history as the Amboise conspiracy.
The abortive peace of Amboise was signed at Amboise in March 1563, between Louis I de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, who had been implicated in the conspiracy to abduct the king, and Catherine de' Medici. The "edict of pacification", as it was termed, authorised Protestant services only in chapels of seigneurs and justices, with the stipulation that such services had to be held outside the walls of towns. However, neither side was satisfied with this compromise.
Following this first French War of Religion, Amboise never returned to royal favour. The French kings moved their royal seat back to Paris and used the palace only as an occasional hunting château. At the beginning of the 17th century, the property passed into the hands of Gaston d'Orleans, the brother of the Bourbon King Louis XIII. After his death it returned to the Crown and was turned into a prison during the Fronde, a series of civil wars. Under King Louis XIV it held disgraced minister Nicolas Fouquet and the Duke of Lauzun.
Since 1840, the Château d'Amboise has been listed as a monument historique by the French Ministry of Culture. King Louis-Philippe began restoring it during his reign but with his abdication in 1848, the château was confiscated by the government. The captive Emir Abd Al-Qadir, who resisted the French colonisation of Algeria, and an entourage of family and retainers were transferred to Château d'Amboise in November 1848. In 1852, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, then president and later king, visited Abd al-Qadir at Amboise to give him the news of his release.
In 1873, Louis-Philippe’s heirs were given control of the property and a major effort to repair it was made. During the German invasion in 1940 the château was damaged once again. Today, the present Count of Paris, descendant of Louis-Philippe, repairs and maintains the château through the foundation Saint-Louis. Since 2000, Amboise’s three castles still existing belong to the UNESCO Word Heritage Site "The Loire Valley between Sully-sur-Loire and Chalonnes" with its many breathtaking châteaux. Altogether there are more than 400 of them in the Loire region.
