Travel
The cutest and the strangest of all pieces of furniture to be found at Villandry were the French beds. Tiny as they were they became a curiosity in my eyes and I was really thankfull to our Modern Age that put bigger and more comfy beds in the French hotels, because the French toilets are a handfull anyways.
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Travel
Château de Villandry And Its Amazing Gardens
Château de Villandry and its out of this world gardens are a must see place for the Loire Vallery visitor. The castle is built on the lands where an ancient fortress once stood until the 17th century.
My husband and I had been on the road for almost two months and we were eager to visit the fairytale like châteaux on Loire Valley, but the weather was playing some tricks on us. It wasn't exacly what you would call a dry European summer and we felt like the clouds were following us all over, except UK, of course, 'cause they never get rain over there, you know?! But that particular hour when we visited the gardens of Villandry the sun smiled on us again.
My husband and I had been on the road for almost two months and we were eager to visit the fairytale like châteaux on Loire Valley, but the weather was playing some tricks on us. It wasn't exacly what you would call a dry European summer and we felt like the clouds were following us all over, except UK, of course, 'cause they never get rain over there, you know?! But that particular hour when we visited the gardens of Villandry the sun smiled on us again.
We took an organized day trip from Tours to four of the most important castles on Loire Valley and as all of them got sacked with the glorious ocassion of the French Revolution, seeing just the most famous ones seemed enough. There are more then 300 châteaux in The Garden of France as Loire Valley is also known so there's no way on Earth one could have seen them all.
Villandry is best known for its Renaissance gardens. Most people don't even bother to take the combined ticket (castle+gardens). But we did, as there wasn't much difference in price and we wanted to see a panoramic view of the gardens from belvedere which by the way is breathtaking and you can further appreciate the talent of the gardeners and all the magic hidden in geometric patterns.
Villandry Castle has a self-guided tour through some pretty small rooms, nicely decorated with lots of photos, paintings, old style furniture and some very beautiful wallpaper. But don't expect any real values. During the French Revolution the property was confiscated and all values "lost". In 1906, Joachim Carvallo purchased the property and poured an enormous amount of time, money and devotion into repairing it.
Inside the castle a very nice surprise was waiting for us. At the last floor there was an exhibition by Renata Prada Vilay, a series of watercolors in which the protagonist was this sweet black and white kitty on a trip to Villandry or maybe she was the cat of Villandry? As I love cats lots I really enjoyed the paintings. Here you can see the kitty in a playfull mood looking after butterflies at the shadow of the vineyard...
... and here it is how the vineyard looks in reality. The grapes weren't riped so we kind of stared at them like the fox in the story.
The Garden of Villandry is France's archetypal potager, a kitchen garden elevated to a regal plain and Frenchified to the maximum. The many crosses in the potager of Villandry are there to remind us of the monastic origins of the geometric kitchen garden. The Renaissance vegetable garden is what made the renown of Villandry but the ornamental garden where the joys and sorrows of love are told and the medicinal plant garden ennobled by the box-tree topiaries are fascinating as well.
You can relax in the shade of the pergolas, by the vast lawns of the water garden or the new Italian-style waterfalls or get lost in the secret maze. What I found very interesting was the Garden of Love with its tapestried boxwood forms telling a story of the themes of romantic love, a garden that is pure symbolism. Most easily recognizable are the perfect hearts of Tender Love (second quadrant on the right in the photo below), perhaps love in its most ideal form, at least by Renaissance standards. In the Passionate Love (first on the right) square, the formerly intact hearts of Tender Love are broken asunder by passion. Within the Renaissance rhetoric, it's all downhill after Passion. In the next quadrant, Fickle Love (first on the left) the elements are more fragmented. That's because after Passion, things get more complicated. During the Renaissance, infidelity could only come to a bad end. In the final quadrangle, Tragic Love (second on the left), the voluptuous and serene forms of Tender Love have devolved into a disarray of jagged shapes representing the sharp daggers and swords wielded by rival lovers. The flowers within the parterres are red, to symbolize the blood spilled in these duels to the death and the ones in the second parterres symbolize passion.
In the photo below you can see the other end of the box-tree garden with forms representing more nationalistic themes, the Maltese cross, the Basque cross, etc.
The Villandry Garden is one of a kind. I've seen lots of other gardens, all beautiful, all well cared for, but none of them had a vegetable garden. So I guess if you like cultivating your own veggies a bit of design and a French Renaissance twist can't hurt.
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