Château of Blois

Stand in the courtyard and turn slowly. Red brick and pale stone to one side. Carved white limestone to another. Severe classical columns behind you. Underfoot, the paving is worn smooth by centuries of boots and wheels. Few buildings in France let you see so many eras from one spot. Here, four wings from four different periods face each other across a single open space. That is the quiet surprise of Blois. You do not need to walk through history. You can simply turn around.

The château sits on a rocky spur above the Loire River, and that position explains almost everything. A high point over a navigable river was worth defending, and a fortress stood here long before any king arrived. In the late fifteenth century, Blois became a royal home. For roughly a hundred years after that, it was one of the places where the French crown actually lived. Kings held court here, queens gave birth here, and politics played out in these rooms, sometimes very violently.

Begin with the oldest survivor, the great hall known as the Hall of the States General. It dates from the thirteenth century, when the Counts of Blois ruled this land. It is one of the oldest surviving secular Gothic halls in France. Look up at the double wooden vault, shaped like the hull of an upturned ship. A row of columns runs down the middle. The walls and ceiling are painted in blue and gold, scattered with the royal lily, the fleur-de-lis. Twice in the late sixteenth century, the kingdom's representatives gathered here in assembly.

Now look at the wing of brick and stone. This belongs to Louis XII, who was born at Blois in 1462 and later made it his royal seat. The style is late Gothic, warm and almost domestic. The red brick is set in diamond patterns of darker brick. Above the entrance stands a statue of the king on horseback. Watch for his emblem, the porcupine, carved in several places. It was a sign that he could defend himself from near and far. His queen, Anne of Brittany, left her own mark here too, the ermine.

Then comes the wing everyone photographs. Francis I added it in the early sixteenth century, as Italian Renaissance ideas reached France. Its centrepiece is the great spiral staircase, built as an open, eight-sided tower attached to the outside of the façade. It is part stairway, part theatre box. Courtiers could stand on its balconies and watch ceremonies in the courtyard below. Look closely at the stone. You will find the salamander, the emblem of Francis, often crowned and surrounded by flames.

Here is a detail many visitors miss. The staircase does not quite line up with the windows of the façade. The architects attached a fashionable new staircase to an older building, and the joins show. The result has a slight, human imperfection. Renaissance builders at Blois were not starting from nothing. They were dressing up an existing castle in a new style, and they worked with what they had.

Inside the Francis I wing, the most famous room belongs to Catherine de' Medici. She was the Italian-born queen who became a powerful force in French politics. Her study is lined with carved wooden panels, many hundreds of them, painted and gilded. Some panels open to reveal small hidden cupboards. Legend says she kept poisons inside them. That story is popular, and guides enjoy telling it. Historians suggest a less dramatic answer. The cupboards most likely held jewels, papers, or precious objects. Still, standing in that small room, it is easy to see why the rumour lasted.

Now the darkest chapter. In December 1588, during the Wars of Religion between Catholics and Protestants, King Henry III felt threatened by the powerful Duke of Guise. The duke led the hardline Catholic League and was popular in Paris. Henry summoned him to the royal apartments here at Blois. The king's guards attacked and killed him in the king's rooms. A few weeks later, in January 1589, Catherine de' Medici, the king's mother, died in this château. Within a year, Henry III himself was assassinated elsewhere.

After those events, the royal court gradually moved away. Then, in the seventeenth century, Gaston of Orléans, brother of King Louis XIII, was sent here, partly to keep him far from Paris. He hired the architect François Mansart to build a grand new classical palace. Gaston planned to replace much of the older castle. Only one wing was built before the money ran out. That is the sober, pale wing with columns and a high dome inside. Some historians see an unfinished project as a failure. Others see a lucky accident. Without the shortage of money, the older wings might have disappeared.

The château went through hard years after that. Parts of it were neglected, and during the French Revolution it lost much of its contents. Later it was even used as military barracks. In the nineteenth century, it was saved. The architect Félix Duban led a major restoration. He brought back colour to many interiors, with painted walls, patterned ceilings, and decorated fireplaces. Some critics think he imagined more than he recovered. But his work is the reason the rooms feel alive rather than empty.

Before you leave the grounds, find the Saint-Calais chapel. It is small and quiet, a fragment of the royal chapel from the time of Louis XII. Its windows are modern, added in the twentieth century, so the light inside has a contemporary feel within a Gothic frame. Then walk to the edge of the terraces. From here, you can see the slate roofs of the old town, the church spires, and the Loire beyond. The river looks calm, but it shaped this city's whole history.

There is one more connection worth knowing. Joan of Arc passed through Blois in 1429, on her way to break the siege of Orléans. And the city was the birthplace of Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, a nineteenth-century magician often called the father of modern magic. A museum of magic stands across the square from the château. Look at its windows on the hour. The building is famous for its large mechanical dragons, which appear through the windows. For many families, that is the moment they remember most.

Now come back to the courtyard one last time. Notice how sound behaves here, footsteps echoing off brick and stone, voices softened by the walls. Turn slowly again. Gothic, early French, Renaissance, classical. Each wing was someone's idea of a perfect palace, and none of them finished the whole dream. As you walk out through the gate, look back at the brick façade and the king on horseback above the door. Then let the town take over, with its steep streets running down toward the river.