Tours Day 2 - Chateau du Clos Luce, Chateau d'Amboise

10/23/2014

Chateau de Clos Luce

To start our visit of the Loire valley and their famed chateaux, we drove 40 minutes to the first chateau on our list, Clos Luce. This drive was not supposed to be 40 minutes, but the road was blocked, or “Route barre” in French. This yellow and black sign has become the bane of our existence in the French countryside, especially in Tours. The French are very vigilant about their road work and it seems that every other road is under construction. They very thoughtfully put up yellow and black “Deviation” signs, pointing you toward an alternative route…which ends up being a 20-something minute detour through back alleys and country lanes. Most routes around Tours are only single lane, so if there are any road works going on, boy, you’re in for a major detour. Thank God we had the GPS. Though their “Deviation” signs are helpful…if you have the eyesight of a teenager. You have to squint to the end of the block sometimes to see that sign.

After parking at the free parking lot, we walked to Clos Luce. On the way, there's a detour if you want a panoramic view of the city:

Though you'll have to climb lots and lots of stairs to finally reach the top. Good Lord, my thighs are still sore!

An ancient well

Chateau du Clos Luce is a very picturesque brick house. The land was originally bestowed by King Louis XI to a favored kitchen boy, whom he’d ennobled. All that remains of this time period is the watch tower:

And a pigeon loft, which we’ll see later in the tour.

Clos Luce

During the reign of King Francois I, on advice from his sister, Marguerite de Navarre, Francois invited Leonardo da Vinci to come stay at Clos Luce. Da Vinci was dissatisfied with his situation in Italy at the time, as he was (not exactly) conscripted by Cesare Borgia to design war machines for the Borgias’ war against other prominent Italian families.

I’ve been crushing on Cesare Borgia ever since I saw Francois Arnauld play the role in Showtime’s TV series, The Borgias. Cesare must’ve been a douche in real life, but Francois Arnauld manages to portray ruthless Cesare as the brooding antihero who reluctantly has to play life’s chess match in order to survive. His father, Pope Alexander VI, was power hungry and sought to consolidate his holdings and take out other families, often drawing Cesare into the bloodthirsty battles “for the name of the family”.

Anyway, so the master genius da Vinci was dissatisfied in Italy. At the invitation of King Francois I, where Francois wrote “Here you will be free to dream, to think and to work,” da Vinci crosses the Alps on mule to France, carrying with him 3 paintings. Which ultimately become the treasure of France: the Mona Lisa, The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, and Saint John the Baptist.

Da Vinci formed a tight, lasting relationship with Francois I, with the king calling da Vinci “my Father.”

In Clos Luce, you can see Leonardo da Vinci’s bedroom, where he used to think and write and draw. The stained glass windows opened out to a view of Chateau d’Amboise, and it was a view that da Vinci loved. 

Leonardo da Vinci's bed

Supposedly once owned by Mary, Queen of Scots. Now displayed in da Vinci's bedroom.

Leonardo da Vinci's desk, looking out the windows

In the room where da Vinci once entertained guests, there’s this painting:

Angel said the paint scared the shit out of her because it's creepy how the eyes keep following you around...much like Mona Lisa's. Upon entering this room, Mom said she felt a chill in the air and she hurried into the next room, though she didn't even notice this painting. She just said something felt "off" about the room, which we guess is because of this painting. I wonder if this is a da Vinci work? They were selling magnets of this in the gift shop. :T

And the secret passageway underneath the two chateaus. The King would take this underground passageway to visit da Vinci:

The gardens at Clos Luce cover 7 acres and it was here da Vinci drew the forestry, laid the foundations of the fieldwork and science behind botany, calculated the distance between tree branches. IBM and the Clos Luce staff have worked together to recreate some of da Vinci’s imaginations, based on his drawings.

Rose named "the Mona Lisa"

The gardens at Clos Luce

Leonardo da Vinci studied the flower below to give rise to the painting above, The Annunciation.

The Madonna Lily

Da Vinci laid the groundwork to engineering the first car, the first helicopter, paragliding, life preserver flotation device (aka the “O” lifesaver), the first tank, swivel/swing bridge, water hydraulics, so many different things it’s mind-boggling.

The bridge is an invention of da Vinci's--it's a movable bridge, so you can pack it up and take it to the next place where you want to cross a river

Another bridge design of da Vinci's

The swivel/swing bridge design of da Vinci--it swivels toward one side of land to let large boats pass.
The predecessor to the suspension bridge design (think the Tower Bridge in London)

This design of da Vinci’s is pretty gruesome. It’s a crawling turtle-tank that has 12 cannons sticking out of its sides. The turtle can swivel 360 degrees, blasting all 12 cannons at once. Yikes. Imagine what kind of damage that would’ve done back in those days.

12-cannon 360 degree turtle tank

Multi-round guns...a da Vinci invention that would later be realized into modern gun designs

During da Vinci's time, the royal court really enjoyed seeing paintings hung out in nature. Kinda like modern art displays, I guess?

Peacock!

Along the garden walk, you can see the pigeon loft that I mentioned earlier. During the time of Louis XI, pigeon lofts were status symbols because meat was rare and you could sell the eggs of pigeons for food. Err…yum? Just think of all those NYC pigeons flying about…

Pigeon Loft

Kings and royalty would often give a pair of pigeons to dignitaries, kind of like showing off that they can afford pigeons. They designed this concave rafter so that rats, ferrets, weasels and the like couldn’t climb to the top of the roof to sneak in and eat the eggs and drink the blood of young pigeons.

Across the pigeon loft is the priory, built sometime in the 1400s. The building eventually came under the ownership of the Amboise family, the same owners of Clos Luce in the 1600s.

Priory

Village of Amboise

After Clos Luce, we made our way to Chateau d’Amboise, a leisurely 5 minute stroll through the village. There were a lot of steps to climb, as d’Amboise is much more grand in scale than Clos Luce.

Entryway of Chateau d'Amboise. Geez, how many steps are there?! We're not even halfway up!

The town of Amboise played a particularly gruesome part in the French Wars of Religion in the mid-1500s, known as the “Amboise Conspiracy”. Catholics and Protestants were fighting for power (much like the same theatre drawn out in Elizabethan England at the time), especially in the aristocratic factions. Between 2-4 million people were killed during the French Wars of Religion. In 1560, the House of Bourbon sought to unseat the then-ruling family, the House of Guise, by kidnapping the young king Francis II. The Comte of Guise found out and sought to stifle the dissension by hanging all suspected conspirators of the plot. This took a month to carry out, there were so many “suspected” conspirators. They’d hang the conspirators from the balconies of Chateau d’Amboise (it’s a steep 70 feet down). By the end of the month, some 1200 people were hanged. The stench of blood and corpses was so bad, the aristocrats had to leave town.

Since then, d’Amboise has never returned to royal favor. It was turned into a prison at one point, then during the French Revolution, many of the buildings were destroyed.

Bird's eye view of the village of Amboise

Leonardo da Vinci is buried in Chateau d’Amboise. He originally stated in his will he wanted to be buried in a chapel there, and King Francois I acceded his wishes. However, in the passing centuries, the chapel was knocked down. In the 1800s, they found da Vinci’s remains and his bones were transferred to the nearby St. Hubert chapel as his final resting spot.

St. Hubert Chapel, across from the chateau

Chateau d'Amboise

Leonardo da Vinci's final resting place inside St. Hubert Chapel

St. Hubert Chapel, where da Vinci is buried

Chateau d'Amboise front view

King Charles VIII purchased the castle and the one next to it, the Chateau d’Amboise, and these became his summer palaces, where he’d hold court with his wife, Anne of Bretagny.

One day, King Charles was hurrying down the trench to see a tennis tournament. On the way there, he banged his head on the stone “lintel” and died within a few hours after the injury.

The ticket includes a free leaflet that is very informative, much like an audioguide, soooo…

Angel/Jen/Dad all did not know what a lintel was, but luckily Mom had requested her free leaflet in Mandarin so she translated (definition FYI - A lintel can be a load-bearing building component, a decorative architectural element, or a combined ornamented structural item. It is often found over portals, doors, windows, and fireplaces.). 

The lintel way down there, where Charles VIII banged his head

Mom also remarked “How can somebody be so stupid? One bonk and you’re dead?!”

BUT.

Earlier in the day, in one of the rooms in Clos Luce, there was an exhibit with medieval artifacts, such as medallions, the Jesus cross thought to be once owned by Mary Queen of Scots (see above), and a painting by one of Leonardo da Vinci’s students. Dad leaned in to look at the painting...

…and bonked his head on the protective glass.

You can see this--notice the painting, how it’s clear:

And this is the oil smudge from Dad's forehead: 

After Charles VIII’s death, his wife, Anne, had to marry his cousin. She was the heiress of Bretagny, which the French kings really wanted under their domain. And marriage was the most expedient way to accomplish this.

I digress.

I keep saying to Angel during this trip, the modelers and designers could figure out all these intricate designs in medieval times. Why can't they manufacture these now?! We're still in the midst of our remodel, and it's killing me that every column, every capital, is so simple in design. Geez, they made such beautiful things...500 years ago. It feels like everything's been dummified down now that no one can figure out how to do these things anymore.

Look at how gorgeous that column is! >.< I want it!

It's so freezing cold that everyone who came into The Throne Room would stand in front of the fire for a good solid 5 minutes before leaving. Look at the size of the logs!

The Throne

The carriage tower, where the horses and carriages would transport goods and people up to the chateau and back down to the village:

There is a statue memorial to commemorate the spot where Leonardo da Vinci was originally buried:

Chateau d'Amboise from the back

The balconies where they used to hang people off of during the French Wars of Religion--look at the steep drop down to the parking lots! St. Hubert Chapel in background.

As we drove back to the hotel, we stopped by a LeClerc where Angel and Mom went down to do some grocery shopping. I had a quick one-hour nap, as I stayed up til 4am last night catching up on the blog. Upon arriving in the hotel, I rushed into the shower, as I couldn’t feel my fingers and feet anymore. It’s freezing in Tours! It’s supposed to be 60 degrees, but the river’s nearby so it’s more like a frosty 40 degrees.

Getting dressed this morning, Angel said very breezily, “You don’t need hat and gloves. It’s 60 degrees—it’ll be fine.”

NOT. 

It might look sunny, but it's freezing cold!

Mom fell in love with these apple pastries. Too bad we've only been able to find it at one grocery store so far.

Dinner was a cozy, intimate affair in our parents’ bedroom, where Mom baked a puff pastry cheese and ham pasty. Angel bought Emmental cheese at LeClerc, so Mom laid on all 10 slices. Yum!

They also bought another brand of the lentil stew, and boy, it was hearty and hot, perfect for this freezing-arse day. Dessert was some French dark chocolate. The perfect end of an almost-perfect day (as long as you don’t listen to Angel about the weather).

Lastly, there is a Loire Valley Chateaux Pass (actually, there's 14 different combinations of these passes, depending on which castles you want to visit). We had picked out the pass we wanted, but it turns out you need to purchase these at the Tourism Office of select cities. It was a waste of time and gas to drive all the way to the "select" cities to purchase these passes, just for a savings of 5 euros/person. Perhaps next time, if the cities were on our route for the day.

Or, you can purchase advanced tickets to save about 1-2 euro/ticket on the Tours' Tourism website, but you need to purchase these 7 days in advance, and we didn't know.