Château de Villandry

Renaissance château with the most famous formal gardens in France

Website https://www.chateauvillandry.fr

The last of the great Renaissance châteaux built on the Loire, completed in 1536 by Jean Le Breton — François I's secretary of state, who had picked up his taste for Italian gardens during a diplomatic posting to Rome. The château itself is restrained by Loire standards, three handsome white wings around a courtyard open to the river, with a single keep retained from the medieval fortress that stood here before.

The gardens are the reason to come. Six terraces step down towards the Cher: the ornamental garden of love, the water garden, a maze, a herb garden, the famous Renaissance potager (kitchen garden) where nine geometric beds of vegetables are replanted twice a year, and a sun garden added in 2008. Climb the keep tower for the aerial view that makes sense of the whole composition. Allow three hours — the gardens are large and unhurried walking is part of the point. Open daily from 9:00, with garden-only tickets in the evening through summer.

things to do sight garden
A story
Villandry was nearly demolished in the early 1900s. The Spanish physician Joachim Carvallo bought the run-down estate in 1906 and spent the next thirty years rebuilding the Renaissance terraces from old engravings — including the now-famous Potager, where vegetables are planted in patterns precise enough that visitors have been known to ask whether the cabbages are real. The Carvallo family still owns and runs the château.