Tours, the « not to be missed » capital of the Loire Valley, opens its doors of the greatest chateaux such as Chenonceau, Villandry, Amboise and more than fifty other castles situated less than 100km away from Tours. Take advantage of our preferential rates to visit the castles and gardens of the Loire Valley.
The only Château on the Loire to be built on the riverbed, Château de Montsoreau was built in 1450 by Jean II de Chambes, a close adviser to King Charles VII. Its history has been marked by the lives of many famous people, including Mary Stuart, Anne of Brittany, Claude of France and François I. Its avant-garde architecture has always inspired artists from Rodin to Turner, Flaubert and Alexandre Dumas. Transformed into a museum of contemporary art and inaugurated in April 2016, the Château de Montsoreau is a new venue that offers, two hours from Paris, in the Loire Valley, a World Heritage Site, and over 2,000m2, a journey through its permanent collection, considered to be the most important collection of Conceptual Art in the world.
The Château de Villandry is a unique example of Renaissance architecture and gardens. Six sumptuous gardens await you: the vegetable garden, the ornamental garden, the water garden, the medicinal plant garden, the labyrinth and the sun garden. The château boasts 18th-century interiors and a collection of antique Spanish paintings.
In a preserved setting, 20 minutes from Tours, the Domaine de Candé takes you on a tour of a unique château in Touraine. The place of the wedding of the century, residence of great fortunes from the 1930s to the 1970s, it presents a tour of 20 fully furnished rooms, decorations in Cordoba leather or Touraine silks, bathrooms in glass mosaics, a Skinner organ on 3 floors, 1,000 m² of wine storehouses equipped with the latest presses, a Bell telephone exchange, a fitness room with equipment equivalent to that on the Titanic... The 230-hectare park with its century-old trees offers 2 hiking trails, contemporary artworks and atypical games. Don't hesitate to take a picnic with you!
Owned by the Indre et Loire Departmental Council, the site comprises two castles: the keep built by the Count of Anjou, Foulques Nerra, and the royal dwelling with its Renaissance architecture. The latter saw Agnès Sorel, Joan of Arc and Anne of Brittany pass through. A pretty medieval garden is also located at the foot of the keep. Each year, a new exhibition is proposed in parallel with the augmented reality tours on the Histopad tablets.