Chateau de Montgeoffroy

We ended Friday pretty much waiting for a busload of tourist to arrive so we could be let in with them and given a tour of the Chateau de Montgeoffroy (in French).

This is quite an impressive chateau for two reasons: 1) it is out in the middle of nowhere so there is no town to block the sweeping vision that you see up ahead and 2) the contents survived the revolution and so are pretty much intact as the chateau is still in the family of the marshal who built it. Essentially the chateau survived because one of the illegitimate grandsons of the marshal was a big shot in Paris on the revolutionary committee and so had it spared.

There was a previous chateau here but it got mostly torn down by a Marshal who commanded the German army in the Seven Years War (notice the wars are getting shorter, at least then) and then went on to be governor of Alsace for 25 years. All that remained of the original was the chapel and two towers (you see one in the picture below):

Here's a view of one of the nearly matching wings. Note the clock on the chapel still tells the correct time. The tower at the end is one of two incorported from the previous chateau.

At this point we weren't used to seeing chateaux impressive from the outside but empty on the inside, so we didn't know that Montgeoffroy's furnishing were anything special. However, we did like the kitchen in the wing above that had hundreds of copper cooking paraphernalia.

Note the high french windows of this 18th century building.

Since all the Chateaux were now closed, we traveled to Saumur to our hotel. The next morning, we were off to Montsoreau. Please join us by clicking here. The page only contains two pictures so this one will load fast.

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