Château de Candé

En un regard

Le château en bref

The Château de Candé is a building in the Louis XII style, located in the commune of Monts, in the French department of Indre-et-Loire in the Centre-Val de Loire region, 10 km south-south-west of Tours on the banks of the River Indre, at the heart of an estate of 260 hectares. A Renaissance manor house, very probably replacing a medieval fortified house in a place called Condatum in the 10th century, was built at the initiative of François Briçonnet, mayor of Tours, in 1499–1500. The château was enlarged in the second half of the 19th century by the wealthy Anglo-Cuban sugar cane planter Santiago Drake del Castillo (born in Havana, Cuba, in 1805) and his son Jacques. They also worked to develop the whole estate (expansion of the farming and forestry operations, construction of outbuildings). The Candé estate was bought in 1927 by the businessman Charles Bedaux. It was at Candé that the "marriage of the century" between the Duke of Windsor and Wallis Simpson was celebrated on 3 June 1937. Since 1974, the château and its park have been the property of the Indre-et-Loire departmental council, which received them from the State, the heir upon the death of Charles Bedaux's widow, which occurred in 1972. The château and its estate have been open to the public since 2000; they also regularly host cultural events.