Gateway to the Loire Valley Châteaux, Chenonceau Spanning the River, Chambord's Double-Helix Staircase & Leonardo da Vinci's Last Home
📍 Tours, France📅 3-day itinerary
The gateway city to the Loire Valley (UNESCO 2000) — where François I built the most extravagant hunting lodge in European history at Chambord (426 rooms, 365 fireplaces, 40,000 construction workers, used by the king 72 nights total), where Chenonceau spans the Cher River on stone arches built for Diane de Poitiers and extended by Catherine de Médicis after Henri II's death, where Leonardo da Vinci spent his last three years (1516-1519) at the Clos Lucé manor house invited by François I, and where Vouvray Chenin Blanc ages for 30+ years in the same tufa limestone caves where the Touraine troglodytes once lived.
The Medieval Half-Timbered Square That Was the Cloth and Money-Changer's Market of Tours — and the Château Built by a Series of Women Owners That Spans the Cher River on Stone Arches: "The Most Beautiful Accident in French Architecture"
The 1519-1547 Royal Hunting Lodge with the Double-Helix Staircase (Two People Can Ascend and Descend Simultaneously Without Ever Seeing Each Other) — the Most Extravagant Building by a French King Who Used It 72 Nights — and the Manor House Where François I Invited Leonardo da Vinci in 1516 to Think and Create as He Wished Without Specific Commissions
The Gardens That Require 40,000 Vegetable Plants and 52,000 Flower Plants to Replant 5 Times a Year in the Pattern of 16th-Century Courtly Love Symbolism — and the Accidental Dessert Invented by Two Sisters Who Baked an Apple Tart Upside-Down by Mistake 60 km South of Tours in the 1880s