The Loire Valley: Châteaux from Blois to Saumur

Send half your party up one flight of the double staircase and half up the other, and watch each other through the openings the whole way without ever meeting; at every level notice that the stair opens into four vestibules laid out as a cross, one for each quarter of the keep, and keep going until it puts you out on the terrace

Stand in front of the south façade and work out which two end pavilions Hergé left off Moulinsart, then look at what the front is made of — pierre de Bourré, a tuffeau from a village down the road that whitens and hardens as it weathers, which is why the façade is this colour — and count the Roman emperors' busts set into it

Walk the 26 metres of the gallery and read the hang: 327 canvases of about 55 by 45 cm, three tiers high, in twelve panels right round the room, every sitter a bust except two — and find the two, Henri IV on horseback over the chimneypiece and Louis XIII

Stand in the courtyard and sort out what you are looking at: three wings — Louis XII's brick-and-stone Flamboyant Gothic, Francis I's Renaissance, Gaston of Orléans's Classical one left unfinished in 1638 — and the medieval traces of the counts' castle behind them, four periods in one square

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 in the first-floor chamber where Leonardo died on 2 May 1519, and notice that everything in it is a guess: the room was restored in 2011 and furnished with period objects from elsewhere, because no description of the rooms he actually used survives and none of his furniture does

Find Leonardo's grave in the Chapel of Saint-Hubert, then walk out to the bust of him on the terrace, standing on the footprint of the collegiate church of Saint-Florentin where he was actually buried in 1519 — the bones under the chapel slab are the ones Arsène Houssaye dug out of that site in 1863 and had moved here in 1874

Walk the 60 m of Catherine de' Medici's gallery from bank to bank, counting the eighteen windows, and notice how narrow it is — six metres, the width of Diane de Poitiers's bridge underneath it

In Saint-Gatien, go to the ambulatory chapels and the high windows of the choir for the 13th-century medallion glass, which the sources rate among the most perfect complete sets left in Europe, then note that the vaults are only 29 m up against Chartres's 37.50 m and decide which building feels taller. Outside, compare the north tower of 1507 with the south tower of 1534–1547, and find the cloître de la Psalette on the north side, named for the psalm school it housed

Walk the six hectares of Villandry's gardens down the four terraces, from the ornamental vegetable garden to the water garden, and work out which beds Dr Joachim Carvallo laid back out from 1906 using Androuet du Cerceau's old engravings

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 300 m spur of the Forteresse royale de Chinon above the Vienne, cross the dry ditches between its three castles, and in the royal apartments of the château du Milieu find the floor slab that marks where Henry II died on 6 July 1189

Work round the collegiate church and find the chapel said to stand where Martin died, then look hard at the carving the church is famous for — specialists are still arguing about which parts belong to which campaign, so pick out for yourself where the stonework changes hand

Walk the river side of the château and find the bare tuffeau rock showing through at the foot of the walls, then pace out the width of the road built along the bank around 1820 — before it existed the Loire came right up to that north façade

Find all four effigies in the abbey church, set two by two from the crossing: Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine behind, Richard the Lionheart in front — and beside him the plain polychrome wooden one, labelled Isabella of Angoulême for centuries but argued since 2024 to be Richard's sister Joan. Eleanor commissioned three of them, including her own, while she was still alive

In the castle René had rebuilt from 1451 out of its burnt ruins — ten years of work — go up to the first floor and find, among the rooms on chivalry and courtly love, the one that traces the Cross of Anjou into the Cross of Lorraine