Fact-checked
The châteaux of Pays de la Loire in the Index — 5 so far, each fact-checked against the historical record. Back to the map.
c. 1450–1460 · Transitional Gothic–Renaissance
The only château of the Loire built directly in the riverbed, rising straight from the water at the confluence of the Loire and the Vienne. Immortalised by Alexandre Dumas in La Dame de Monsoreau, it houses a museum of contemporary art since 2016.
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14th century (on older foundations) · Late-medieval princely castle
The fairy-tale silhouette immortalised in the September page of the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry — a princely castle of the Dukes of Anjou crowning the town and the Loire below, later a governor's residence, prison and barracks, now the town's museum.
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1230s (fortress); interior lodgings 14th–15th c. · 13th-century royal fortress
Seventeen colossal striped towers of dark schist banded with white limestone — the fortress Blanche of Castile raised against Brittany in the 1230s. Inside its half-kilometre of walls hangs the Apocalypse Tapestry, the largest surviving medieval tapestry cycle in the world.
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Rebuilt from 1606 within medieval towers · 17th-century baroque within a medieval shell
The 'Giant of the Loire Valley' — at seven storeys the tallest château in France, its baroque façade wedged between the medieval towers the rebuilding never managed to demolish. Seat of the Dukes of Brissac since 1502, it hides a gilded Belle Époque opera theatre in its upper floors.
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15th century; rebuilt 19th century · Moated Breton-marches castle
White stone doubled in a broad lake on the edge of the Brière marshes at Missillac — the château the old blog post mislaid in the Loire Valley. Burned in the Revolution and rebuilt in the 19th century, its outbuildings are now a celebrated hotel and golf resort while the château itself remains private.
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