Château de Chenonceau: A Renaissance Residence on the Cher
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- Very High
- Country
- France
- Primary era
- Classical
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Classical, Medieval
- Civilizations
- French
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Palace
On this page29 sections
History
Château de Chenonceau is a Loire Valley château in France, built and transformed between the medieval period and the Renaissance on the Cher River. The estate is mentioned in writing from the eleventh century, while its strategic importance grew from river traffic carrying wood, building materials, salt, wine, and fodder between surrounding regions.
Medieval lordship and destruction
A château and a fortified mill stood at Chenonceau by the thirteenth century, when the lordship belonged to the Marques family. Its position concerned control of movement along the Cher rather than command of a river crossing. During the Hundred Years’ War, a conflict between the English and French crowns that brought prolonged military occupation and destruction to parts of France, Jean Marques opposed Louis of Guyenne and surrendered Chenonceau to English forces.
French forces recovered the site in 1411 after Boucicaut’s victory at the meadows of Vintin. Chenonceau was then burned and razed, together with the Marques properties at Houdes and Petit Château-Gaillard. Jean II Marques received Charles VII’s authorization to rebuild in 1432. The replacement residence stood on a different site and included a square, moated enclosure beside the Cher.
The Bohier residence
Financial difficulties brought the Marques lordship into legal seizure on 3 June 1496. Thomas Bohier purchased it for 7,374 livres tournois, although proceedings and another confiscation continued until he took possession on 10 February 1512. He paid 15,641 livres for the final acquisition and rendered homage to Louis XII through Étienne Poncher, bishop of Paris.
Bohier was a royal notary, secretary, chamberlain, financial administrator, and general of finances in Normandy. With his wife, Katherine Briçonnet, he transformed the estate. In February 1514 the six acquired fiefs were formed into a châtellenie, a territorial lordship administered from a château, dependent on the barony of Amboise. The new lordship covered about 1,680 hectares and roughly ten parishes.
Most of the Marques residence was demolished, although its platform, tower, and well were retained. Construction of the new residence took place from 1513 to 1521, under Katherine Briçonnet’s direction during her husband’s long absences. Thomas Bohier died in Italy in 1524, and Katherine died on 3 November 1526.
Royal possession and the bridge of Diane de Poitiers
An audit later uncovered financial embezzlement by Thomas Bohier. On 28 May 1535, his son Antoine II Bohier transferred Chenonceau and Houdes to Francis I for 90,000 livres. Other assets and financial obligations brought the total arrangement to 150,000 livres. Francis I forgave the remaining debt in recognition of the family’s service, and Chenonceau became a royal residence.
Under Francis I, the château remained in poor condition and received no substantial renovation or decoration. The king and court stayed there in August 1538 after the Truce of Nice, and Francis returned for a hunt in spring 1545.
After Francis I died in 1547, Henry II gave Chenonceau to his mistress, Diane de Poitiers, Duchess of Valentinois. Letters patent confirmed the gift in June 1547. Diane created a garden on the right bank of the Cher, protecting it from flooding with embankments and masonry while organizing its terraces, parterre, and plantings.
Diane also revived Thomas Bohier’s earlier plan to connect the château with the opposite bank. Philibert de l’Orme designed the bridge, and construction took place from 1556 to 1559 under the direction of his brother, Jean Delorme. Francis I had authorized the project in 1517, but it had not previously been carried out.
Catherine de Médicis and the galleries
Henry II’s death on 10 July 1559 changed the ownership of Chenonceau. Catherine de Médicis compelled Diane de Poitiers to return the estate to the Crown in exchange for Chaumont-sur-Loire. The transfer was sealed at Blois late in 1559 and confirmed at Chinon on 10 May 1560.
Catherine made Chenonceau a favored residence and commissioned new gardens, buildings, and festivities. She arranged celebrations for Francis II and Mary Stuart in March and April 1560. Further festivities for Charles IX took place from 13 to 22 April 1563 after the Peace of Amboise, an agreement that temporarily ended the first French Wars of Religion.
Her major building campaign began in 1576 under Jean Bullant and the master mason Denis Courtin. It added rooms beside the chapel and library, changed the north façade, and created two galleries above Diane’s bridge. Work on the Dômes and Chancellerie continued from 1580 to 1585, and the project was formally completed on 23 August 1586. A planned expansion on the left bank was abandoned, leaving unfinished stonework visible in the building.
Chenonceau hosted Catherine’s sons Henry III and Francis, Duke of Anjou, during a lavish royal celebration on 19 May 1577. Catherine died at Blois on 5 January 1589, and Henry III was assassinated on 1 August that year.
Louise of Lorraine and the Capuchin community
Louise of Lorraine inherited Chenonceau after Henry III’s death. She transformed it into a place of mourning and retreat and became known as the “White Queen” or “White Lady of Chenonceau.” Her apartments were fitted with black furnishings, mourning symbols, tears, and bones.
Louise intended to establish the Capuchin community in France and left 20,000 écus for a convent foundation. Financial claims against Catherine de Médicis’s estate led to the seizure and attempted sale of Chenonceau. Gabrielle d’Estrées acquired the creditors’ mortgage rights in December 1597, but in 1598 she abandoned them in Louise’s favor after Louise helped secure the submission of her brother, Philippe-Emmanuel of Lorraine, to Henry IV.
With financial assistance from her brother, Louise reacquired the estate and transferred it on 15 October 1598 to her niece Françoise of Lorraine and César de Vendôme, while retaining the right to its income and use. After Louise died on 29 January 1601, Chenonceau passed to the couple. Marie of Luxembourg, Duchess of Mercœur and Françoise’s mother, settled the disputed ownership with the creditors and became the estate’s owner after completing the required payment and legal process on 15 November 1606.
Marie of Luxembourg and the seventeenth century
Marie of Luxembourg repaired the roofs, basins, agricultural buildings, bridge arches, embankments, chapel, gardens, and park. From 1611 she withdrew from court politics to Chenonceau, where she spent the last twelve years of her life. She also housed twelve Capuchin nuns in the château while a convent was being arranged at Tours.
The nuns occupied rooms in the roof space, including a chapter room for community meetings, a refectory, dormitories, and an oratory for private prayer above the chapel vault. Their community provided charitable assistance to the parish. Louis XIII visited Chenonceau in August 1615 and again briefly in August 1619.
After Marie died in 1623, the estate returned to Françoise of Lorraine and César de Vendôme. César took possession in September 1624, maintained the roofs and parks, and hosted Louis XIV, the queen mother, and Mazarin on 14 July 1650. Louis XIV was the last king of the ancien régime, the French monarchical order before the Revolution, to visit Chenonceau.
The Dupins and the French Revolution
After successive inheritances, Anne of Bavaria, Dowager Princess of Condé, sold Chenonceau on 14 September 1720 to her grandson Louis-Henri de Bourbon, Prince of Condé, for 300,000 livres. Louis-Henri sold it on 9 June 1733 to the financier Claude Dupin for 130,000 livres.
Claude and Louise Dupin repaired and redecorated the château. Louise’s literary salon welcomed Voltaire, Fontenelle, Marivaux, Montesquieu, Buffon, Rousseau, and other Enlightenment writers. Jean-Jacques Rousseau served as secretary and tutor in the household, composed music there, staged plays, and wrote Sylvie’s Path, named after an avenue in the park.
The Dupins removed the mourning decoration from Louise of Lorraine’s apartments and converted the former Capuchin rooms into servants’ accommodation. They also eliminated the internal drawbridge, restored neglected gardens and vineyards, consolidated the dikes, and cleaned the moats.
During the French Revolution, Louise Dupin settled permanently at Chenonceau on 11 September 1792. She helped save the chapel by converting it into a wood store, while the château’s manager, Abbé François Lecomte, protected important archives by placing them under municipal seals. Louise permitted the destruction of several royal and seigneurial portraits but resisted the confiscation of the estate as national property.
In 1795 she demonstrated private ownership through titles dating from before 1566 to Claude Dupin’s purchase in 1733. Chenonceau was therefore not confiscated, although Louise was subjected to forced loans in 1796 and 1798. She died at the château on 20 November 1799 and was buried in the woods on the opposite bank of the Cher, aligned with the gallery. Her family erected a large antique-style sarcophagus with an epitaph and inscriptions.
Nineteenth-century restoration
Louise Dupin’s grand-nephew René Vallet de Villeneuve inherited Chenonceau in 1799. He and his wife retired there after the fall of Napoleon’s regime, while Pierre Bretonneau supervised the property during their earlier absences. Villeneuve repaired Revolutionary damage, restored the gardens, replaced destroyed paintings, and installed casts of royal monograms and historic busts.
Chenonceau appeared on the first national list of historic monuments in 1840. In 1852 René Vallet de Villeneuve requested legal protection, and the architect Eugène Lambert proposed repairs to the bridge vault, large corbels, chimneys, dormer, and chapel campanile, a small bell-bearing architectural feature. The seigneurial archives, hidden during the Revolution, were recovered in 1859 and inventoried and published by the archaeologist Casimir Chevalier.
In April 1864 the Villeneuve family sold Chenonceau, its three parks, a mill, dependencies, and 136 hectares of land to Marguerite Wilson, later Madame Pelouze. From 1865 to 1878 she undertook an extensive restoration directed by Félix Roguet, a disciple of Eugène Viollet-le-Duc.
Roguet’s work substantially altered the château. It removed Catherine de Médicis’s rooms beside the chapel and library, changed the north façade, moved the four monumental Caryatids into the park, rebuilt the corner turrets, and renewed much of the interior and exterior decoration. The campaign also reconstructed the former Capuchin rooms and restored the tower, Chancellerie, orangerie, gardens, parks, and moats.
Marguerite Pelouze hosted an academy of arts and letters at Chenonceau, receiving writers, historians, musicians, painters, and sculptors. Her restoration and lavish lifestyle caused severe indebtedness. The estate was mortgaged, seized, and sold by court auction on 5 January 1889 to the Crédit Foncier for 410,000 francs.
The Menier estate and the world wars
The Crédit Foncier opened the neglected château to visitors but sold it in 1891 to José-Emilio Terry. He transferred it to his brother Francisco Xavier Terry in 1896. Francisco’s daughter Nathalie Terry, later Countess de Castellane, retained it until its auction in 1913.
Henri Menier acquired Chenonceau in 1913 for 1,361,660 francs. After his death that year, his brother Gaston Menier inherited it. The Menier family has owned the estate since that acquisition.
During the First World War, Gaston Menier established a military hospital at Chenonceau on 2 August 1914. It operated until 31 December 1918 and treated 2,254 wounded soldiers. Gaston repaired the principal façade’s dormers and bridge piers damaged by the Cher. In 1927 he commissioned Jean Hardion to reconstruct the Moulin-Fort de Chisseau.
During the Second World War, the Ministry of War requisitioned the château in 1939. A major flood on 7 May 1940 devastated the Garden of Diane. German artillery fire in June 1940 damaged the gallery roof and the exterior stair of the tower of the Marques, after which German forces occupied the site.
From 1940 to 1942, the Cher and the château marked the line separating the occupied and free zones of France. The first-floor gallery was used by the Resistance to move people into the free zone. Allied bombing on 7 July 1944 damaged the chapel and destroyed its original stained-glass windows. The château and parks were subsequently repaired under the administration of the Historic Monuments authorities.
Conservation and continuing ownership
In 1951 and 1952 the Menier family entrusted conservation and management to Bernard Voisin. For fifty years he directed the château and vineyards and helped restore the property and gardens after wartime damage and flooding.
Legal disputes followed Antoine Menier’s death. A 1975 Court of Cassation decision established full ownership in Renée Vigne, Antoine’s widow. She later sold the estate to Odette Menier, whose son Jean-Louis Menier directed its artistic affairs with his wife Laure. Laure Menier managed conservation and administration from 2002 until Pauline Menier replaced her on 28 June 2023.
Chenonceau and its environment became part of the UNESCO World Heritage protected area of the Loire Valley in 2017. A major restoration campaign from 2009 to March 2012 renewed façades, the gallery exterior, roof framework, campanile, masonry, stained glass, ironwork, and paintwork. Later work included spectral imaging of artworks in 2017, the Russell Page garden in 2018, stabilization of the château’s timber-pile foundations during the 2019 drought, and the reconstruction of Catherine de Médicis’s apothecary in 2019 and the Cabinet of Sciences in 2024.
Remains
Chenonceau combines late Gothic and early Renaissance forms with Italian influences. Its main Renaissance residence stands on the Cher, while the medieval tower occupies the former fortified site on the right bank. The present layout therefore brings together the square medieval enclosure, the Bohier residence, Diane de Poitiers’s bridge, Catherine de Médicis’s galleries, gardens on both banks, and later agricultural and parkland features.
Medieval tower and Renaissance residence
Tower of the Marques
The medieval château occupied an almost square enclosure of about 50 by 55 metres. Masonry terraces, running-water moats on three sides, the Cher on the fourth, four round corner towers, curtain walls, residential ranges, and a fortified entrance formed its defenses. The tower of the Marques is the visible surviving part of that medieval complex. The round tower has a stair turret and was renovated by Thomas Bohier with large mullioned windows, an ornamental doorway, white-stone dormers, walkway corbels, a stone entrance porch, and a small belfry whose bell bears the date 1513.
The tower also preserves the initials “TBK,” referring to Thomas Bohier and Katherine Briçonnet. Beside it, the well has a rim decorated with a chimera and a double-headed eagle, the emblem of the Marques family. The tower is no longer accessible to the public.
Bohier residence
The Renaissance corps de logis, or principal residential block, is almost square, measuring about 22 by 23 metres. It has two storeys and a basement, with corner turrets, and stands on substantial stone foundations belonging to the former mill on the right bank.
The entrance vestibule opens toward four rooms on each side and leads at the far end to the lower gallery. Its ribbed vault, a vaulted ceiling supported by intersecting ribs, has staggered keystones forming a broken line. The carved corbels date from 1515 and show foliage, roses, angels’ heads, chimeras, and cornucopias.
The vestibule contains sculptures of Saint John the Baptist and an Italian Madonna, an Italian marble hunting table, and a stained-glass window made by Max Ingrand in 1954 depicting the legend of Saint Hubert. The sixteenth-century oak entrance door represents Saint Catherine and Saint Thomas and bears the Bohier motto. Its exposed-beam ceiling carries Catherine de Médicis’s interlaced double Cs, while its floor has late nineteenth-century polychrome faience tiles by Léon Parvillée’s Paris workshop, reproducing sixteenth-century paving from the church at Brou.
The Guards’ Room contains Thomas Bohier’s arms on the fireplace, sixteenth-century Flemish tapestries depicting courtly life, a marriage proposal, and a hunting scene, together with Gothic and Renaissance chests formerly used for travelling court silver. The principal staircase is one of the early straight, double-flight staircases in France based on an Italian model. Its intersecting-rib vault has carved coffers with human figures, fruit, and flowers, while its doors represent the Old Law and the New Law. A landing forms two balustraded loggias overlooking the Cher.
Bridge and galleries
Diane de Poitiers’s bridge
The southern extension, built by Philibert de l’Orme around 1560, has two storeys and a roof space and rests on a five-arched bridge across the Cher. Its lower level contains a gallery. Diane’s bridge consists of five semicircular arches. It is narrower than the original château and lies slightly downstream from the main façade, joining the residence to the left bank and supporting the later galleries.
Catherine de Médicis’s gallery
Catherine de Médicis’s gallery is about 60 metres long and 6 metres wide, with eighteen windows. Its tuffeau-and-slate tiled floor, exposed-beam ceiling, and two Renaissance-style fireplaces belong to the long ceremonial and residential hall added above Diane’s bridge. One fireplace is a decorative surround around the southern door leading toward the left bank.
The upper gallery was divided into apartments by partitions, probably for servants. Two spiral staircases connect it with the lower gallery, and two facing fireplaces retain decoration with chained figures. Since 1980 the upper gallery has hosted annual exhibitions of contemporary art. The first-floor gallery also served as part of the First World War hospital, with 70 beds, while the ground-floor gallery held 50 beds and an operating room. Electricity, heating, and an electric water pump were added for the hospital, and Charles Toché’s large frescoes were covered with white paint.
Chapel, apartments, and collections
Chapel and first-floor rooms
The chapel opens from the Guards’ Room through an oak door surmounted by the Virgin. Its panels depict Christ and Saint Thomas and carry Gospel inscriptions. Inside are a Carrara-marble Virgin and Child by Mino da Fiesole, a carved credence bearing the Bohier motto, and Édouard Avisseau’s 1890 bas-relief The Virgin with Fish.
The chapel’s stained-glass windows, installed after nineteenth-century alterations, were destroyed in 1944 and replaced by Max Ingrand in 1954. Paintings include works attributed to Il Sassoferrato, Alonzo Cano, Murillo, and Jean Jouvenet. Two Scottish inscriptions or graffiti date from 1543 and 1546. A royal gallery overlooks the nave and opens toward the Chamber of the Five Queens on the first floor. The chapel’s Revolutionary survival is also reflected in its conversion into a wood store.
The Chamber of Diane de Poitiers has a Jean Goujon fireplace, a ceiling bearing the intertwined initials of Henry II and Catherine de Médicis, a seventeenth-century canopied bed, Cordovan leather chairs, paintings attributed to Sauvage and Murillo, a work by Ribalta, and Flemish tapestries titled The Triumph of Fortitude and The Triumph of Charity.
The Green Cabinet, once Catherine de Médicis’s study, has a ceiling with her interlaced Cs. Its furnishings and collections include the Brussels tapestry known as “Aristolochia,” two sixteenth-century Italian cabinets, and paintings attributed to Tintoretto, Jordaens, Goltzius, Jouvenet, Bartholomeus Spranger, Veronese, Poussin, and Van Dyck.
The Library overlooks the Cher and retains an oak coffered ceiling from 1525. Its recessed ornamental panels and pendant keys have an early Italianate form and bear the initials T, B, and K. The room contains works attributed to Andrea del Sarto, Bassano, Correggio, Jouvenet, and the French school of the seventeenth century.
The Chamber of Francis I contains a Renaissance-style fireplace rebuilt in the nineteenth century, three fifteenth-century French credenzas, and a sixteenth-century Italian cabinet inlaid with engraved mother-of-pearl and ivory. Its paintings include works attributed to the Primaticcio, Mirevelt, Ravenstein, Van Dyck, Ambroise Dubois, Zurbarán, the German school, and Carle Van Loo.
The Salon of Louis XIV has a red interior, a portrait of Louis XIV by Rigaud, a carved and gilded frame by Lepautre, Aubusson-upholstered furniture, a Boulle-style console, and a Renaissance-style fireplace decorated with the salamander of Francis I and the ermine associated with Claude of France. Paintings are attributed to Rubens, Van Loo, Nattier, Chamillard, Netscher, Ranc, and Mignard.
Rooms of the queens and royal household
The first-floor vestibule has small terracotta tiles marked with a fleur-de-lis crossed by a dagger, an exposed-beam ceiling, and Italian marble medallions of Roman emperors brought by Catherine de Médicis. It also contains six seventeenth-century Audenarde tapestries depicting hunting and picnic scenes after designs by Van der Meulen.
The Chamber of Gabrielle d’Estrées contains Renaissance furniture, a canopied bed, Gothic credenzas topped by polychrome wooden female heads, a leather-covered travelling chest, and Flemish tapestries showing the siege of Troy, the abduction of Helen, games in the Colosseum, the crowning of David, and an episode from the life of Samson.
The Chamber of the Five Queens commemorates Marie Stuart, Marguerite of France, Louise of Lorraine, Elisabeth of Austria, and Elisabeth of France. Its sixteenth-century coffered ceiling bears the arms of the five queens. A canopied bed, Gothic credenzas, a leather-studded travelling chest, Flemish tapestries, and paintings attributed to Rubens, Pierre Mignard, and the Italian school complete the room.
The Chamber of Catherine de Médicis retains sixteenth-century furniture, Flemish tapestries representing the life of Samson, a Renaissance fireplace and tiled floor, and Correggio’s painting The Education of Love on wood. The work’s original location at Chenonceau was this chamber.
The Cabinet of Prints consists of two small rooms containing drawings and engravings of Chenonceau, ranging from 1560 to the nineteenth century. Its ceiling, attributed to the workshop of Nicolas Bertin, depicts the Crowning of Flora or Aurora with Aeolus and a river god.
Upper floors and Louise of Lorraine’s chamber
The room attributed to César de Vendôme has an exposed-beam ceiling, a Renaissance fireplace painted with Thomas Bohier’s arms, seventeenth-century wooden Caryatids, three Brussels tapestries depicting Demeter and Persephone, and a painting of Saint Joseph attributed to Murillo. The second-floor vestibule preserves traces of Félix Roguet’s nineteenth-century restoration, Renaissance credenzas, Renaissance pavement, and a nineteenth-century Neuilly tapestry depicting the Cher and a Venetian gondola.
The Chamber of Louise of Lorraine has black panelling, mourning paintings, religious decoration, and a prie-dieu facing the window. Its reconstructed original ceiling is decorated with silver tears, widows’ cords, crowns of thorns, and the intertwined initials of Louise of Lorraine and Henry III.
The former Capuchin area in the roof space included cells, a refectory, a chapter room, dormitories, an oratory above the chapel vault, and an internal drawbridge separating the community from the rest of the residence. The rooms were converted into servants’ accommodation in the eighteenth century and reconstructed in the nineteenth.
A concealed second-floor room revealed in 2011 contains religious decoration beneath nineteenth-century panelling. Its features include a painted wooden Annunciation represented by an archangel, laurel and foliate frescoes, interlaced monograms, and the initials MA and IHS with a cross. Blue and other colors remain partly preserved. The room’s function and date remain uncertain; proposed interpretations connect it with the Capuchin nuns, an eighteenth-century or Revolutionary-era clandestine place of worship, or another religious use.
Basement kitchens
The kitchens occupy the basement within the former mill’s stone piers, which form a massive substructure. They include offices, a large vaulted room with the château’s largest fireplace, a bread oven, a staff dining room, a butchery with game hooks and chopping blocks, a pantry, and the main kitchen.
A landing quay provided direct delivery of goods to the kitchens and is traditionally called Diane’s Bath. The sixteenth-century kitchen equipment was replaced by more modern equipment during the First World War to serve the hospital.
Entrance court and estate buildings
Entrance court and farm complex
The entrance court includes the tower of the Marques, the Dômes building, the wax museum, and the Chancellerie. Built in the sixteenth century, the Chancellerie leads toward the Garden of Diane. The Dômes contains a gallery devoted to the First World War hospital, Catherine de Médicis’s reconstructed apothecary, and the Cabinet of Sciences opened in 2024.
The sixteenth-century farm complex contains Catherine de Médicis’s stables, a kitchen garden, and a flower workshop. The kitchen garden includes more than 400 rose bushes, while the flower garden covers about 10,000 square metres. The long avenue of honour is planted with plane trees for nearly one kilometre and is flanked by the farm, the labyrinth, and the Caryatids.
Two eighteenth-century stone sphinxes at the entrance were installed by René Vallet de Villeneuve and came from the former Château de Chanteloup at Amboise. Opposite the Green Garden, the former orangerie once housed orange and lemon trees and now contains a tearoom and restaurant.
Gardens and parkland
Historic gardens beside the Cher
The Garden of Diane lies on the right bank and is entered through the Chancellerie. An embankment and raised terraces protect it from Cher floods. The garden also has a landing stage and a central fountain described in 1576 as water issuing from a shaped stone into a white-stone pentagonal basin.
The Garden of Catherine de Médicis lies opposite the west side of the château. Its more intimate design centers on a basin. The two historic gardens stand on opposite sides of the tower of the Marques. Left-bank gardens created in the sixteenth century included two large squares divided by an avenue aligned with the gallery and the north-south axis, while the adjoining hillside contained caves.
Green Garden and later designs
Lord Seymour designed the Green Garden in 1825 as an English-style park for the Countess Vallet de Villeneuve. The grassy enclosure contains plane trees, blue cedars, Spanish fir, catalpa, horse chestnut, Douglas fir, sequoia, black locust, black walnut, and holm oak. Catherine de Médicis had earlier selected the area for a menagerie and aviaries.
The Italian-style labyrinth created for Catherine de Médicis covers more than one hectare and contains 2,000 yew trees. A raised central gloriette, or garden pavilion, is surmounted by a statue of Venus. A surrounding hornbeam enclosure contains the Caryatids moved from the château façade during the nineteenth-century restoration. The four sculpted figures represent Hercules, Pallas, Apollo, and Cybele.
The Russell Page Garden was created in 2018 from a design discovered in the estate archives. Russell Page prepared the original plan in the 1950s, but it was not executed at that time. The completed garden includes works by François-Xavier Lalanne.
Materials, restoration, and preservation
The 1870s restoration created or renewed numerous interior elements, including woodwork, sculpture, paintings, flooring, the second flight of the staircase, the chapel door, the Caryatids, the great gallery’s historical and allegorical frescoes by Charles Toché, the reconstructed Capuchin rooms, and new paving and plasterwork in the bridge piers.
The château’s principal material vulnerabilities are linked to the Cher. Floods have submerged gardens and arches, while the drought of 2019 threatened the wooden piles supporting the arches. The water level was raised by lifting the Civray needle dam so that the foundations remained immersed.
The restoration campaign from 2009 to 2012 renewed the façades of the Bohier residence, the exterior of the gallery, the oak roof framework, the campanile, stone friezes, masonry, stained glass, ironwork, and painted surfaces. The apothecary reconstructed in 2019 uses Italian walnut-burl furniture and approximately 500 blue-and-white faience jars and pots.
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