Loire Valley

The Loire Valley is where the French kings came to play, and they played on a scale that still astonishes. Between Orléans and Angers, the Loire River meanders through a landscape of such gentle, cultivated beauty that UNESCO designated the entire valley a World Heritage Site — not for a single monument, but for the way human habitation and natural landscape have intertwined over a thousand years. This is the garden of France, and it looks the part.

Chambord is the show-stopper — a Renaissance château so extravagant that even François I, who commissioned it, seemed unsure what to do with it once it was built. The double-helix staircase, possibly designed by Leonardo da Vinci, allows two people to ascend simultaneously without meeting. The roofline is a forest of chimneys, dormers, and turrets that looks like a small city built on top of a palace. I visited on a November morning when the park was wrapped in fog, and the château emerged from the mist like something from a fairy tale that had decided to become architecture.

Chenonceau is the château I love most — built across the River Cher on a series of arches, its gallery stretching over the water like a bridge someone decided to make beautiful. It was a house of women: built by Katherine Briçonnet, expanded by Diane de Poitiers, transformed by Catherine de Medici. During World War I, it served as a hospital. During World War II, the gallery bridging the river sat exactly on the demarcation line between occupied and free France, and the Resistance used it as an escape route. History here is not decoration; it is structure.

The wines of the Loire are France’s best-kept secret, and I say this as a Frenchman who grew up drinking them. Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé produce Sauvignon Blancs of a mineral precision that New Zealand has spent decades trying to replicate. Vouvray makes Chenin Blancs — dry, off-dry, sparkling, sweet — that can age for decades. Chinon and Bourgueil produce Cabernet Francs so elegant they make Bordeaux seem like it is trying too hard. The domaines here are small, family-run, and welcoming in the way that only producers who are not yet famous can afford to be.

The valley itself rewards slow travel. Cycle the Loire à Vélo route along the riverbank, stop in villages like Amboise — where Leonardo da Vinci spent his last years and is buried in the chapel of the royal château — or Azay-le-Rideau, whose château floats on its own reflection in the Indre River. The tuffeau stone of the buildings glows white in the afternoon light, and the troglodyte caves carved into the cliffs house wine cellars, mushroom farms, and the occasional restaurant.

When to go: May to June for the gardens in bloom and long days. September for the grape harvest. The son et lumière shows at the châteaux run from June to September and are worth one late night.