The Loire Valley - La Vallée de la Loire

The Loire Valley (La Vallée de la Loire) is one of the most beautiful regions in France and is extremely popular with tourists keen on visiting a part of France other than the famous resorts by the sea or in the mountains.

The Chateau de Chenonceau

The Loire Valley is in fact referred to as the Garden of France (le Jardin de la France) and the Cradle of the French Language (le Berceau de la Langue Française). The most striking element of the Loire Valley is its architectural heritage, in its famous historic towns such as Amboise, Angers, Blois, Chinon, Orléans, Saumur, and Tours, but also of course its "châteaux" often translated as castles, but palaces or stately homes would probably be a more accurate translation. The most well-known and striking are the Château de Chambord, Châteaux d'Amboise, Château d'Ussé, Château de Villandry and Chenonceau.

In the year 2000, UNESCO named the central part of the Loire valley, between Maine and Sully-sur-Loire, a World Heritage Site. The committee described this part of the Loire Valley as: "an exceptional cultural landscape, of great beauty, comprising historic cities and villages, great architectural monuments - the Châteaux - and lands that have been cultivated and shaped by centuries of interaction between local populations and their physical environment, in particular the Loire itself."

There are over 300 châteaux in the Loire Valley some of them dating back many hundreds of years. The French kings decided to constructing their huge châteaux in this area, and as a result the nobility, who were keen to remain close to the seat of power, did likewise, attracting by the same token the very best landscape designers.

King Francois I, however, in the middle of the 16th century, decided to move the center of French power from the Loire valley back to the ancient capital of Paris. The great architects naturally went with him, but the Loire Valley nevertheless continued to be the place where most of the French nobility preferred to spend the majority of their time.

In the middle of the 17th century King Louis XIV made Paris the permanent site for great royal châteaux by building Palace of Versailles just outside Paris. The wealthy and the nobility still continued, however, to renovate existing châteaux or to build new ones as summer residences in the Loire valley.