Fort Saumur

Saumur was a nice town without a lot to do other than eat dinner after dark (what's the catch?) We tried to make the castle opening at 9:30AM and almost did it. The guides (mostly teenage girls) had to unlock galleries for us as the town has converted several of the once-empty rooms into three separate museums (the details of which, we will spare you, at least this trip).

Here's the September (of all months!) page from Tres riches heures du Duc de Berry

Multi-use

The building looks like what we all think is a castle and I'm sure most of you recognized it as being the model for the white castle in the Tres riches heures du Duc de Berry. This is the last (so far) of a succession of fortresses on this truly commanding position. This building was finished around the end of the 14^th century. It has had other careers as a prison (usually for noblemen who had angered the king and got to bring their valets, but it also stored 800 English sailors during the US war for independence)and a barracks.

The picture below, though, shows that they have some restoration to do and leaves a poor impression as you enter the place. Check out the cracked stones on the left of the doorway/stairs into the courtyard.

Here's another view showing the scaffolding (which to be fair we found on almost all of the eleven chateau we visited:

But things improved once we travelled through this entrace to the courtyard. Here's a typical stairs which were obviously added during the pleasure palace days:

Generally we took the stairs and went through the three museums pretty fast. We were rewarded with a sunny fall morning with views from the top of the spectacular views from the walkway at the top of the chateau as you can see looking downriver (West)...

…and upriver across to the Northern part of Saumur with the soccer field:

The towns people use the castle and its grounds for a variety of uses. Besides the three museums inside, the grounds are used for music festivals, etc. Here's a picture of the amphitheater literally in the castle's shadows (at least it would be in late afternoon or evening -- we took this picture in mid morning):

The rest of Saumur had a number of sites we would have liked to investigate including a Cavalry museum and the Musee des Blindes (a place for armed vehicles. Pietrina accused me of wanting to go there so I could write a headline called "tanks for the memories" but, dear reader, you know I would never punish you like that.)

But we will return to Saumur some day. After all, a place that produced 42% of France's mushrooms can't be all bad. Soon we were on the road to our 2^nd of four chateau for the day at the Chinon ruins. Please join us by clicking here.

Where do you want to go today? Here's a few choices:

Return to the index of our Loire trip: