Visiting Chateau d’Amboise, France

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Visiting Chateau d’Amboise, France, is a highlight of any Loire Valley tour. Known as the Royal Nursery, many future kings and queens were raised here, and Leonardo da Vinci worked here in 1516, but this popular French castle hides more than one tragic tale.

Amboise Castle © L. de Serres

Visiting Chateau d’Amboise, France

The Chateau d’Amboise killed Charles VIII in 1498. Yes, the castle killed him. The 28-year old king of France smacked his head on the lintel (a top beam) of a doorway on the way to the castle’s Haquelebac Gallery that overlooked the castle ditch, where a game of Jeu de Paume was going on. He collapsed soon after and died. To make matters worse, the Haquelebac Gallery was a filthy spot, where, ahem, people were known to urinate. Not a choice place to die.

Visiting Chateau d’Amboise, France, Loire Valley

A gloomy day for visiting Chateau d’Amboise

For a much-loved castle in the scenic Val de Loire, the fate of Charles VIII is a dark bit of history, but it suited the weather as I walked up the long ramp to the castle. Fog and rain shrouded the peaked towers and round turrets, and I could easily picture another tragedy ready to happen. Once inside, I looked around nervously, but all doorways and lintels seemed lofty enough to safely pass through.

What caught my interest more was the elegant Council Chamber, a high-ceilinged hall with pointed arches and white pillars carved with fleurs-de-lis and ermine tails.

Council Chamber © E. Sander

Chateau d’Amboise history

Built on a rocky outcrop overlooking the Loire River, the Royal Chateau of Amboise dates back centuries it was the 15th and 16th centuries that made it famous. While it’s known for its late Gothic and early Renaissance architecture and furnishings, and its connection to Leonardo da Vinci, who moved to Amboise in 1516, it has more than one tragic tale to tell. And since I’m a dismal sort of person who likes to dwell on sad sordid histories, I plan on sharing a few.

Town of Amboise

Charles VIII at Amboise

But first we need to take another look at Charles VIII. Why? Because before his death at the hands of the chateau (if chateaux had hands) he went to Italy and brought back the Renaissance. Normal people bring back souvenirs, like a tea towel with a picture of the Colosseum on it. Charles brought back an entire artistic movement along with furniture, fabrics, artists and stonemasons.

Mind you, most people don’t go sightseeing with an invading army at their side and conquer Naples while they’re at it. (Though he did almost get trapped trying to come back.)

Cupbearer’s Room

A love affair with the Renaissance

While in Italy the youthful King Charles grew enamoured of the art and architecture of the Italian Renaissance – and one of his most ambitious projects when he returned was to reconstruct Amboise Chateau.

Two kings later, the handsome Francis I who, like Charles VIII, grew up at the chateau, continued to enlarge it. He’s the one who invited Leonardo da Vinci to France. And while the chateau is now a fraction of the size it was at its peak, it’s still one of the most visited chateaux on the Loire Valley castle trail.

Saint-Hubert Chapel – Leonardo lies here

Chateau d’Amboise and Leonardo da Vinci

Happy to escape political turmoil in Rome, the 64-year-old Leonardo da Vinci came to Amboise and brought a few of his favourite paintings, the Mona Lisa included. He was given the title of ‘Premier Painter and Engineer and Architect of the King’ and housed in the nearby Château du Clos Lucé.

Da Vinci died in Amboise in 1519, and his tomb lies in the delicate-looking gothic Chapel of Saint-Hubert on the castle grounds – so if you’re visiting Chateau d’Amboise don’t miss it.

The Renaissance lives!

Dancing the Renaissance

I didn’t bring a masterpiece like the Mona Lisa with me, but I did bring my dancing boots. I was here to learn a Renaissance dance, a special invitation I was thrilled to accept.

Correction: I was here to attempt to learn to dance. If the castle keepers had had any idea how uncoordinated I am – a trait I apparently shared with Charles VIII who did, after all, walk into the beam of a door – they might have had second thoughts. I just hoped they had liability insurance.

Touring Chateau d’Amboise

Before dancing, I toured the castle, so if you’re visiting the Amboise Chateau for yourselves, here are some highlights you won’t want to miss:

• Visit the Guards’ Room to see weapons, armour and models of the chateau then and now.
• In the Council Chamber, a room where many festive events took place, notice the two fireplaces, one Gothic style and one Renaissance. You’ll also see a throne decorated in royal blue fabric and gold fleurs-de-lis.
• The Drummers Room was once the king’s dressing room.
• The Cupbearer’s Room shows the king’s table. The tapestries are French 17th century.
• The bedroom of Henri II who was married to Catherine de Medici.
• The Orleans Apartments show the castle during the 18th century.
• Check out the Minimes Tower (Tour des Minimes), where you can stand outside and look out over the Loire Valley.
• The gardens designed for King Charles VIII by a Neapolitan monk and gardener.

View from the tower

Chateau d’Amboise and Anne Boleyn

As I stand in the Cupbearer’s Room, a room lined with tapestries, I try to imagine Anne Boleyn whisking past. Years before she caught the eye of the English Tudor king, Henry VIII, she came to the French court in 1516 to serve the wife of Francis I, Queen Claude.

Queen Claude had a particular fondness for Amboise, and since Anne arrived just before Leonardo da Vinci it’s almost a certainty she and Leonardo da Vinci would have crossed paths. If only Leonardo had painted her, what an intriguing masterpiece that would have been. And if only Anne Boleyn had stayed in France, she might not have lost her head when Henry VIII grew tired of her.

Henri II’s bedroom © E. Sander

Mary Queen of Scots in Amboise

A generation later Amboise chateau became home to five-year old Mary Queen of Scots and her four-year old betrothed, the future Francis II. When he died at the age of 16, Mary returned to Scotland and we know what happened then. Like Anne Boleyn, she was beheaded at the Tudor Court.

© L. de Serres

Keeping my head

I was determined to keep my head during my dance lesson. My fellow dance student, Rachel, and I studied the troupe of costumed dancers as they went through the steps. Anne Boleyn was known for her grace and lithe dancing, maybe I could channel her. It seemed simple enough, but I immediately went twirling off the wrong way.

The problem was that when I should have been concentrating on hopping and stamping, I was thinking about one of the most tragic affairs to ever hit the chateau, the Amboise Conspiracy of 1560.

Dark shadows of history

The Amboise Conspiracy

The conspiracy was a plot spearheaded by a group of highborn protestant Hugenots to kidnap the young king Francis II (Mary’s husband) in order to remove him from the influential grip of the powerful Catholic Guise family.

The plot was discovered. As the Hugenots arrived at Amboise Castle they were arrested and slaughtered. Bodies were strung on iron hooks around the castle walls, on trees, even from a castle balcony. Others were thrown into the Loire River or drawn and quartered. Some 1200 Hugenots died altogether.

Visiting Chateau d’Amboise France

The decline of the Royal Chateau of Amboise

The stench of rotting bodies forced the court to move on. This, as you can imagine, didn’t do much for the chateau’s image. It never regained royal favour. In the 1700s it was used as a prison, in the French Revolution much of it was destroyed, and it was further damaged when the Germans invaded in 1940. At this point you might be thinking it’s a miracle the chateau survived at all.

A visit to Amboise Chateau today

But it did survive and underwent a bit of second renaissance in the 19th century. Today it’s maintained by the Count of Paris and, as our group of dancers switch to a more stately court dance, I’m not thinking of tragedies but of ethereal-looking chateau where royal children laughed, art and culture flourished and the French Renaissance was born. I still blame this overload of castle images for my disastrous show at dancing, but at least I didn’t fall and crack my head.