Azay-le-Rideau and Saché: The Island Château and Balzac's Refuge
Centre-Val de Loire, France
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225
XP
+100 France
= 325 total
1 day
Azay-le-Rideau and Saché: The Island Château and Balzac's Refuge
225 + 100 XP
The Renaissance château of Azay-le-Rideau was built from 1518 to 1524 for Gilles Berthelot, treasurer of France, and his wife Philippe Lesbahy, partly on piles in the bed of the Indre; Berthelot was away on the king's business and it was Lesbahy who ran the building site. The State bought it in 1905. Seven kilometres up the Indre at Saché, Honoré de Balzac stayed about ten times between 1825 and 1848 at Jean de Margonne's château, where he worked twelve to sixteen hours a day; it has been a museum of the writer since 1951. Balzac lunched at Azay once and called it a diamond cut with facets, set in the Indre.
Required Activities
1
of 5
Stop at the entrance door, built like a Roman triumphal arch, and find the initials of Gilles Berthelot and Philippe Lesbahy cut into it, with François I's salamander and Queen Claude's ermine under the windows below — flattery that did not save them, since Berthelot was condemned for embezzlement in 1527, fled, and the king confiscated the unfinished house. Then look along the roofline for the machicolations and the wall-walk, both of them for show and no use at all
2
of 5
Walk the park round to the south and west and find the two sheets of still water the château stands in — they look like medieval moats and are not: the chief architect of historic monuments had the river arm widened in 1950 to make them. Stand where the whole front comes back at you upside down and judge Balzac's phrase for yourself, a diamond cut with facets and set in the Indre
3
of 5
Go up the grand staircase with its straight flights — look back from the court first and see how its three tiers of loggia windows deliberately break the rhythm of all the others — then study the coffered ceiling above you and work out which of the profile heads are 16th-century originals and which belong to the 19th-century set a Biencourt ordered, running the kings and queens of France from Louis XII to Henri IV
4
of 5
In Balzac's room at Saché, find three things on and around the desk by the window — the guillotine he cut his paper with, the whale-oil lamp he worked by, and the small low armchair — then look at the narrow bed in the alcove under its crimson-branched cretonne and work out where twelve to sixteen hours of writing a day actually left room for sleeping
5
of 5
Work through the rooms at Saché that are not real — the dining room and salon of Clochegourde, the curé de Tours's bedroom, Foedora's boudoir, the lawyer Derville's office — all furnished as Balzac wrote them rather than as anyone lived in them, and find the corrected proof sheets of Le Lys dans la vallée. Then go out into the two-hectare park and look down the Indre valley he set that book in
Stop at the entrance door, built like a Roman triumphal arch, and find the initials of Gilles Berthelot and Philippe Lesbahy cut into it, with François I's salamander and Queen Claude's ermine under the windows below — flattery that did not save them, since Berthelot was condemned for embezzlement in 1527, fled, and the king confiscated the unfinished house. Then look along the roofline for the machicolations and the wall-walk, both of them for show and no use at all
Walk the park round to the south and west and find the two sheets of still water the château stands in — they look like medieval moats and are not: the chief architect of historic monuments had the river arm widened in 1950 to make them. Stand where the whole front comes back at you upside down and judge Balzac's phrase for yourself, a diamond cut with facets and set in the Indre
Go up the grand staircase with its straight flights — look back from the court first and see how its three tiers of loggia windows deliberately break the rhythm of all the others — then study the coffered ceiling above you and work out which of the profile heads are 16th-century originals and which belong to the 19th-century set a Biencourt ordered, running the kings and queens of France from Louis XII to Henri IV
In Balzac's room at Saché, find three things on and around the desk by the window — the guillotine he cut his paper with, the whale-oil lamp he worked by, and the small low armchair — then look at the narrow bed in the alcove under its crimson-branched cretonne and work out where twelve to sixteen hours of writing a day actually left room for sleeping
Work through the rooms at Saché that are not real — the dining room and salon of Clochegourde, the curé de Tours's bedroom, Foedora's boudoir, the lawyer Derville's office — all furnished as Balzac wrote them rather than as anyone lived in them, and find the corrected proof sheets of Le Lys dans la vallée. Then go out into the two-hectare park and look down the Indre valley he set that book in
Before you go
Saché closes every Tuesday of the year and on 1 January and 25 December; it shuts over the middle of the day outside July and August and at 5 o'clock from November to March. Adult about 7.50 euros, 6.50 reduced, free under 7. Azay-le-Rideau is a separate ticket and a separate site run by the Centre des monuments nationaux, with over 310,000 visitors a year — go first thing or late in the afternoon in summer. The two are 7 km apart along the Indre, about ten minutes by road, so do them in one run rather than doubling back.
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Challenge Location
XP Breakdown
Challenge XP
225 XP
France country bonus
+100 XP
Potential total
325 XP
Country bonus earned on completion of your first challenge in France.
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