Eight More Loire Châteaux Worth Knowing

The Loire Valley has far more good châteaux than any one guide can cover properly. Our in-depth pages focus on nine houses we know well enough to advise on honestly; this page covers eight more that come up constantly in trip planning and deserve a straight answer. None of them needs special pleading: Blois is a serious royal palace, Chinon and Loches are the region's best medieval sites, Ussé is the postcard, and Brissac is the tallest château in France. Broadly, add them on a second visit, a longer first one, or when one falls on your route between bigger names. Each profile below says where the place is, what it is actually known for, and who it suits.

01Château Royal de Blois

Four wings, four centuries of French royal architecture around one courtyard · Blois (direct trains from Paris and Tours)

Blois is the easiest of these to reach without a car: the château stands in the middle of town, a short walk from the railway station on the Paris–Tours line. Its appeal is compression — four wings in four styles, from medieval hall to classical wing, arranged around a single courtyard, with the François I wing and its openwork spiral staircase as the showpiece. Seven kings and ten queens of France stayed here, and the Duke of Guise was murdered in the royal apartments in 1588 on the orders of Henri III. From April to September a nightly sound-and-light show plays across the courtyard façades. It works on a rainy day, too — most of the visit is indoors.

02Château d'Ussé

The turreted château said to have inspired Perrault's Sleeping Beauty · Rigny-Ussé, between Chinon and Tours

Ussé is the one that looks like an illustration: white stone, a crowd of turrets and chimneys above the Indre, forest rising behind. It is said to have inspired Charles Perrault's Sleeping Beauty, and the château leans into that gently, staging scenes from the tale in its upper rooms. It is still privately owned and lived in by the Blacas family, which shows in the furnished interiors — the furniture has stayed in the house across centuries rather than arriving from a museum store. Formal gardens designed by Le Nôtre, a chapel, cellars and stables round out the visit. It opens roughly mid-February to mid-November and closes over winter, unlike the big state-run houses.

03Château de Langeais

The 1491 wedding of Charles VIII and Anne of Brittany, in a furnished medieval interior · Langeais, on the Loire between Tours and Saumur

Langeais rewards people who care about the Middle Ages more than the Renaissance. Louis XI had it built from 1465, and it faces both ways: the town side is all fortress — drawbridge, machicolations, parapet walk — while the courtyard side is a comfortable late-medieval residence. Inside are fifteen furnished rooms with tapestries and carved furniture, including a staged reconstruction of the event the château is known for: the dawn wedding of Charles VIII and Anne of Brittany on 6 December 1491, which began Brittany's attachment to France. In the park stands the keep of Foulques Nerra, raised around the year 1000 and one of the oldest stone keeps still standing. The Institut de France owns and maintains it.

04Château de Saumur

The fairy-tale silhouette from the Très Riches Heures, now the town's museum · Saumur (Anjou)

Saumur's château is the one in the picture: it appears in the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, and the silhouette above the Loire has kept its shape. The town bought the building in the early twentieth century, and it now houses Saumur's municipal museum, with a Musée de France designation — decorative arts on one floor (tapestries, ceramics, furniture), an equestrian collection on another, fitting for the town that hosts the Cadre Noir riding school. Come as much for the position as the collections: the terraces look down on the old town, the river and the Anjou vineyards. It pairs easily with the area's wine cellars and troglodyte sites.

05Forteresse royale de Chinon

The fortress where Joan of Arc met the future Charles VII in 1429 · Chinon, above the Vienne

Chinon is a fortress, not a pleasure palace — a long line of ramparts and towers on a spur above the Vienne, really three linked castles: Fort Saint-Georges, the Château du Milieu and Fort du Coudray. Henry II Plantagenet, king of England, made it his last refuge and died here; Eleanor of Aquitaine knew these walls; and in 1429 Joan of Arc came here to seek out the Dauphin, the future Charles VII. Much of the site is open sky and rampart walk, so the HistoPad tablet, which rebuilds the vanished rooms in 3D, earns its keep more than at most monuments. The medieval town below, with its red-wine cellars, is half the reason to come.

06Cité royale de Loches

A 37-metre 11th-century keep and the royal lodge of Agnès Sorel · Loches, south of Tours

Loches is two monuments on one walled spur above the Indre: an 11th-century keep, 37 metres tall and among the best preserved of its age in Europe, and a royal lodge at the other end that received Joan of Arc, Anne of Brittany and Agnès Sorel, the favourite of Charles VII. Between them runs a small fortified town you can wander freely. The keep later served as a prison, and inscriptions left on its walls — painted and engraved — survive; an interactive trail with sound and projections fills in the rest. Loches sits south of Tours, off the main river circuit, which keeps crowds thinner than at the famous names. Open year-round.

07Château de Valençay

Talleyrand's palace of Empire-era diplomacy and dining · Valençay (Indre), southern edge of château country

Valençay sits on the edge of château country — in the Indre, closer to Berry than to the river itself — and on the edge of its usual story, because its great figure is not a Valois king but Talleyrand, Napoleon's foreign minister, who acquired it in 1803 and used it to receive foreign dignitaries. The exiled Spanish princes were housed here for years, and their apartment is part of the visit. The interest is Empire rather than Renaissance: furnished apartments, a table culture the château still trades on — Talleyrand employed the celebrated chef Carême — plus a large park and a busy season of shows and events. Worth the detour if you are driving south from Chenonceau.

08Château de Brissac

The tallest château in France, still home to the Dukes of Brissac · Brissac-Loire-Aubance, south of Angers

Brissac is the tallest château in France — seven storeys and some 204 rooms, which earns its nickname, the Giant of the Loire Valley. This is Anjou rather than Touraine, south of Angers, and it is still a family house: the current Duke of Brissac is the fourteenth, in a line here since René de Cossé bought the estate in 1502. The interiors are the point — gilded ceilings, precious furniture, and a private Belle Époque theatre of around 200 seats, dedicated to opera and created by the Marquise de Brissac in the late nineteenth century. Visits are guided, which suits a lived-in house, and the estate makes its own wine, with tastings offered in the cellars.