Setting aside, because of a wide choice, other places of this happy region, those of the "Thélème Abbey" (François Rabelais), architecture and history, sweetness of life and famous rosés, halfway between Orleans and Tours, here is Blois.
A bit of resplendent history
Blois saw history pass ; it was even the capital of the kingdom of France under Louis XII from 1498 to 1526.
During the Renaissance, it attracted the powerful like its neighbor Amboise.
The most glorious, raised here between his sister Marguerite de Navarre, (future grandmother of Henri IV) and his mother, is a Valois, François d'Angoulême, who became François 1st in 1515 on the death of his father-in-law Louis XII.
The enthusiasm of Angoumois for the Loire Valley and the nearby "Angevin sweetness" is proverbial.
Known for having wanted, in the wake of Louis XII, to appropriate the Italian Piedmont on the pretext of an old heritage, François 1st fights for a long time against his Hispano-Saxon alter ego Charles Quint (Charles V) the Habsburg, sharp trunk and prognathic chin, which the beard will later benefit.
Francis was jealous of him, of his power (this empire "on which the sun never sets") and prestige when he was elected in 1519 22nd Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire ("Emperor of the Romans"). He shared with him, however, the practice of French that was the native language of Charles at the Court of Burgundy in Flanders ; Burgundy inherited from his great-grandfather Charles le Téméraire (the Bold), and which he tried in vain to take back from France.
Opponents to the point that François allies himself durably against Charles Quint with Suleiman the Magnificent (magnificent? finally,... especially the turban) and its Ottomans, sometimes with the Protestant Henry VIII, whom Charles Quint also courted.
His reign, and those of his son Henry II and his grandson Henry III then became entangled in the murderous fury-madness of the Wars of Religion. Until the arrival of the Navarrese Bourbon, Henry IV.
Blois, a city where life was good... and good also for dying ; Catherine de Medici, wife of Henry II, died there, just after the Guise brothers, leaders of the Catholic League, who were assassinated there in December 1588 on the orders of her son Henry III.
With the famous phrase that was attributed to Henry III after the murder of Henri de Guise "the Scarface" who - like François 1st - was nearly 2 meters tall : "he is greater dead than alive".
It is in any case here along the wild river that François 1st built at all costs with magnificence, even if it means ruining the kingdom, attracting around him the best artists of this time, especially Italian, up to the great Leonardo (at the Clos-Lucé in Amboise).
Three other local notorieties... and a bit of magic
Later Denis Papin (1647-1713) was born in the neighborhood.
His inventions, specially that of the steam piston, hold in this time of magic. However, he found an attentive ear only in England with Boyle, after having met Huygens and Leibniz in Paris.
The superb flight of stairs of 120 steps in the axis of the Pont Garnier bears his name, and dominates a stele honoring him. Spectacular "visuals" have been represented in global perspective on the risers since 2013.
Is Blois a city of wonders and illusions?
Because, another illustrious Blésois, here is the one who nicknames himself Houdin (1805-1871) born Robert, - Jean-Eugène Robert Houdin - watchmaker, creator of automatons.
He became so famous a magician that he was held to be the father of prestidigitation; and that he has its museum here.
But let's avoid mistakes, however, or another illusion. Our Robert Houdin and Harry Houdini, born Weiss, Hungarian emigrated to the USA, born in 1874, another famous illusionist who knew the first and took this name to pay tribute to him, were not the same person.
Born in the area of Blois in 1825, here is also Auguste Poulain, the one of the famous chocolate (in France), which he markets since 1848 here.
Our confectioner will make it the gourmet product with the success that we know in France.
Coincidentally, his 1st shop is held in the very birthplace of Robert Houdin. So that cocoa flavor is perhaps only an illusion of taste...
Slate roofs and half-timbered houses
Blois, upper town on limestone hillside 70 to 100 meters high, lower town and banks on alluvium. Blois whose name comes from the old Gaul meaning "wolf".
The high north hill, bluish with slate roofs that stood on the living river, is identified by its two monumental churches, the St-Nicolas church on the lower bank, bristling with sharp bell towers, the other on the hill a little upstream, the St-Louis Cathedral with its unique domed bell tower surmounted by a lantern, which proudly dominate the Loire.
The cathedral and its bell tower, seen from below, and viewed on the plateau from the rear.
In its streets, interesting half-timbered houses and small corbels.
One of the façades, those of the wellknown House of Acrobats in the Pierre-de-Blois street, is adorned with original sculptures, realistic, profane, intact after restoration, probably inspired by acerbic and perhaps naughty fables of the Middle Ages. It dates from the reign of Louis XI.
The Royal Castle (the Royal Castles)
The nobility and the king mixed with the people; in any case from their distant heights.
Climbing the slope from the esplanade to the west, a beautiful façade of brick and white stone unfolds, flamboyant Gothic of the 1st royal castle, that of Louis XII, the mistreated son of Louis XI.
Louis XII is represented as an amble equestrian statue, superb and quite realistic, faithful reproduction made in 1857 of the original statue torn down during the Revolution, but where the initial headdress (a beret is said, but what kind of beret?) was replaced by the crown.
The vast interior square of the castles is an open book where three successive architectures are illustrated in situ clockwise and going back in time : classicism (Gaston d'Orléans wing), Renaissance style (with the monumental staircase and dominating the city to the exterior the vast façade known as the Loges) and flamboyant Gothic (Louis XII wing).
In the Renaissance part, the famous openwork staircase, helix balconies, from which poeple saw and were seen is a masterpiece of the Renaissance, the beginnings of the much more virtuoso staircase of the Chambord castle.
... a Renaissance-style moucharabieh.
The very large restored rooms of the Hall of States General are of great and noble richness.
Henri III (very beautiful cheerful face opposite) gathered there the States General from October 1588 to January 1589 on the pretext of raising funds.
In fact, the tension is extreme between him and the Catholic League of Henri de Guise during the 8th War of Religion.
The League reproached him for not fighting Protestantism with enough vigour and its leader the Huguenot Henry of Navarre, who had in the meantime become a pretender to the throne of the kingdom. For Henry III, whose wife Louise of Lorraine had only miscarriages, had no descendants, and his brother François died in 1584.
Very busy with his intelligence of power, he shares it with the "average" nobility, the "mignons", opposed to the higher nobility, already very powerful and quickly hated.
If his homo (or bi) sexuality, mocked by his enemies is likely, it is not historically proven.
Before being abandoned under Louis XIV, the castle of Blois will host between 1499 and 1620 illustrious people such as Cesar Borgia, Machiavelli, Charles Quint himself, Ronsard, Marie Stuart, Admiral Coligny, Henri IV in dotted lines, but also will host sumptuous weddings, the holding of States General by Henry III, and will be the scene of the assassination of the Guise brothers.
Elsewhere the "Halle aux Grains", beautiful building of 1850 is a few steps from a double water tower of original architecture about which there is no information.
The pleasantly landscaped banks allow very long bike rides, from where you can see in passing a reconstruction of an old gabarre with a red square sail.
Small mania of royal animal emblems
The royal characters liked to retain an animal for their emblem, for supposed legendary qualities that they took up on their own.
For some, it is the bee (Childeric, father of Clovis, then Napoleon 1st who will share it with the eagle), the toad for Clovis himself, the easy and very pretentious lion for Louis VIII and Charles V the Wise ...
In Blois, it is naturally the ermine, symbol of purity, which returns to Anne of Brittany, wife of Louis XII. It was already the emblem of Brittany, whose heraldic motif is found on the Breton flag.
For King Louis XII himself, it is the porcupine (or hedgehog) with the motto "he who rubs it, pricks it".
For his son-in-law François 1st, it's the famous salamander, which was then said not only that it was born from the flames, or from them it could survive, but that it could kill with a single glance.
Lightning symbol.
Nearly three centuries ago, wether Marco Polo had known the giant panda in the Middle Kingdom, would Francis 1st have adopted it as his royal symbol rather than the salamander?
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Too cabbage and too cabotin, as we can see in Beauval.
Even if it is the current emblem of the WWF.
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