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Château de Villandry

— A Renaissance château and garden, Villandry has been through a lot, but its best years are surely still to come.”

Dating from around 1536, the château at Villandry is the last notable example of the Renaissance period to be built beside the Loire. Just over two centuries later, it passed from its original owners the Le Breton family to the Count of Castellane who drastically modernised the buildings.

The Castellanes kept the château only 35 years before selling it on in 1789 to a coffee baron named Chénais who had been ruined by the Haitian Revolution. Chénais’ luck never improved and he was forced to sell to a profiteer named Ouvrard who failed to pay off the sum required. Napoleon I stepped in for the debtor but gave Villandry to his brother Joseph who himself sold it on to the newly-ennobled Hainguerlot family in the early nineteenth century.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Villandry was not in ideal condition. Joachim Carvallo, the doctor who bought it in 1906, wrote: “When I came to settle at Villandry and looked closely at the château and the estate, I was terrified by the crushing burden I had taken on.”

Villandry was to be a labour of love for Carvallo and his wife Ann. Together they restored the château to its original Renaissance state, carefully reversing all the later development done by the Castellanes and others. From the parc à l’anglaise they refashioned richly expansive herb and flower gardens à la française in keeping with the restoration work.

Villandry has been a designated historical monument since 1934 and the gardens are also protected on a national register. Though it receives close to half a million visitors every year, the château retains a peaceful, intimate atmosphere. In good weather, walking in the gardens with the fragrance of the herbs in the air is a genuine pleasure.