Just three kilometres from the main Cheverny estate, the Château de Troussay makes an instructive contrast to its famous neighbour. Where Cheverny is grand and symmetrical, Troussay is intimate — a small Renaissance manor built at the end of the 15th century, surrounded by an English-style park that feels almost domestic.
The château owes its current form to Louis de Saussaye, a 19th-century historian and archaeologist who acquired it in 1828. Saussaye salvaged architectural elements from other Loire châteaux being demolished or remodelled at the time — carved stonework, panelling, fireplaces — and incorporated them into Troussay, creating what amounts to a small museum of Loire Renaissance craftsmanship. It is still privately owned and open to visitors, and the interior retains a lived-in quality that larger châteaux have long since lost.