DiscoverFrance Library

Posted by jessica@discoverfrance.com on November 4, 2009

From the 13th to the 15th century, the estate of Chenonceau, with its unprepossessing feudal manor, was the property of the Marques family. In 1513 Pierre Marques, up to his eyes in debt, had to sell the château. It was purchased by Thomas Bohier, the General Tax Collector for Normandy, who razed all existing buildings and undertook the construction of a third generation of château on Chenonceau. After Thomas Bohier’s death in 1524 and his wife’s death in 1526, their son Antoine had to yield the château to the Crown to pay off the debts incurred by his father. The High Constable of Montmorency took possession of the château in the name of François I. In 1563, Catherine de Medici transformed the gardens of Chenonceau in accordance with the plan devised by Bernard Palissy in his Drawing of a Delectable Garden. Catherine de Medici died in Blois on January 5, 1589 at the age of seventy. She bequeathed the château to Louise of Lorraine, the Queen and the wife of her son Henri III. The extensive transformations undertaken in 1576 were not yet finished. That same year, Henri was murdered in Saint-Cloud. Overcome with grief, Louise gave way to melancholy and never recovered. Soon called The White Queen by the villagers, she turned Chenonceau into a place of meditation and solitude. Symbolically, she stored all the velvet and satin dresses for the feasts in a large chest in the gallery. In 1624 César of Vendôme became the owner of the estate and his wife, Françoise of Lorraine, Duchess of Vendôme, was entrusted with its management. She endeavored to maintain the estate and to keep the château in good repair. During the whole of the 12th century, the heirs to Queen Louise and their descendants succeeded one another as owners of Chenonceau without managing to recapture its former glory. Louis XIV was the last King of the Ancien Régime to go there, which he did on July 14, 1650.