Château du Lude

En un regard

Le château en bref

Perched on a spur overlooking the Loir, the Château du Lude combines a former medieval fortified keep with successive residential wings. The richly carved south façade is considered one of the finest surviving examples of Italian influence in sixteenth-century France; the east façade is regularly ordered, and the west façade, in the classical spirit of the eighteenth century, opens onto the river through a portico. To the north, a nineteenth-century neo-Gothic and neo-Renaissance restoration adds a stair tower, balcony and gallery. Inside, the rooms follow one another in sequence: a fifteenth-century vaulted hall, the Zodiac Gallery, a painted studiolo, a Renaissance library and a former medieval kitchen that is still in use. Built of tuffeau, flint and rubble stone under a slate roof, the château is accompanied by terraces, moats, outbuildings and a terraced park designed notably by Édouard André around 1900. A privately owned family property, it is open to visitors.