Chaumont-sur-Loire: The Château Diane Was Forced to Take

Required Activities

• Walk all twenty festival gardens — each about 210 m², each the winning entry in that year's international competition — work out the theme they were all set, and pick the one that answered it best

• Stand on the Loire terrace at Chaumont and judge the swap for yourself: this is a fortress on a hill above the Loire, and the Chenonceau that Catherine took in exchange is a gallery built out across the Cher — then go and see the other half of the bargain and decide who was hard done by

• Go into Paul-Ernest Sanson's brick-and-stone stables of 1877, reckoned at the time the most luxurious in Europe, and find the fittings of the arc electric lighting they were given at the same moment as the Opéra Garnier — horses wired for electric light before most of France was

• From the terrace above the Loire, work out why the hill was taken in the first place — Eudes I, count of Blois, fortified it in the 10th century to stop the counts of Anjou coming up the river at Blois — then stand in the courtyard on the open side, where Charles I d'Amboise's north wing faced the Loire until it was lost, and see how much of the view the château used to wall off

• Out of festival season, do the part that runs all year: the permanent gardens — the vallon des Brumes, the jardin de méditation and the sentier des Fleurs Sauvages — and the contemporary art the domaine has commissioned from painters, sculptors and photographers every year since 2008, installed in the stables, the outbuildings and the park