# Château de Chenonceau audio guide, five stops, free.

A ballroom 60 metres long and 6 wide, set on five arches midstream in the Cher. Hear how it got there in five stops, then photograph any fireplace or tapestry in the house and Chiaro narrates that as well.

Made by Chiaro. Not affiliated with Château de Chenonceau. Page: https://chiaro.ai/landmarks/chateau-de-chenonceau/

A house built by women on a mill in a river is the story this free Château de Chenonceau audio guide follows, self-guided, from the estate entrance to the water's edge. The first stop plays at the entrance, looking along the avenue of plane trees that runs almost a kilometre towards the Cher; the second waits at the end of it, on the forecourt beside the Tour des Marques; inside, you cross the ground floor to the long wing on the bridge, then take the stair down to the kitchens in the old mill piers; and you come out west of the house, in Catherine de' Medici's garden, facing the whole west front. About 10 minutes of listening, and a little over a kilometre on foot, most of it the avenue.

Prices, hours and access notes come from chenonceau.com, as it stood on 1 October 2026, the estate's own site, in its English and French versions; the history was checked against the estate's history pages and against Wikipedia in both languages. Chenonceau is a family-owned house that changes its displays through the year, so on the day the château's own staff and signs outrank this page; tell us what differed and we will put it right.

## The stops

### 1. The avenue of plane trees

Planes planted for Count René Vallet de Villeneuve (1777–1863), in place of the elms that lined the avenue; the two eighteenth-century sphinxes at its far end come from the Château de Chanteloup · Planted under René de Villeneuve, owner from 1799 · Plane trees in double rows along an avenue of almost 1 km · At the estate entrance, by the ticket office and the shop, looking in along the avenue towards the château

Audio: https://audio.chiaro.ai/landmarks/chateau-de-chenonceau/en/plane-tree-avenue.mp3?v=941914 (118 s)

Look for:
- The two rows of plane trunks, running dead straight away from the entrance for almost a kilometre.
- The height of the canopy. These planes replaced the elms that once lined the avenue, and were planted for René Vallet de Villeneuve, who inherited in 1799.

Look in through the entrance, straight down the avenue, and let it do its work. Two rows of plane trees, dead straight, running away from you for almost a kilometre towards the river. At the far end the château is only a pale shape, and that is the point of an avenue like this one: the house waits at the end of a long green corridor and grows as you walk.

The trees are younger than they look, at least next to the house. For a long time this avenue was lined with elms. The planes were put in by René Vallet de Villeneuve, a great-nephew of Louise Dupin, who inherited Chenonceau in 1799 and whose family kept it for sixty-five years. He also brought the pair of stone sphinxes you will pass at the far end, eighteenth-century pieces from the Château de Chanteloup near Amboise, the Duke of Choiseul's old estate, which was broken up in the nineteenth century.

Before you start walking, take hold of the thread that runs through this whole place. The estate describes its own history as an almost uninterrupted succession of women who built it, embellished it, protected it, restored it and saved it. A financier's wife ran the building of the house. A king's mistress gave it a bridge across the river. A queen raised a gallery on that bridge and governed France from a small study indoors. A widowed queen shut herself away there in mourning. A hostess of the Enlightenment saw it safely through the Revolution. You will meet most of them in the next four stops.

The men who bought it had their moments too. In 1913 the chocolate maker Henri Menier acquired the estate and wrote to his young wife, Thyra, that if he had not bought Chenonceau, one of those upstarts who saw in it only a childish vanity would have. He died five months later, and his brother Gaston inherited. The Menier family still own it, and they first opened it to visitors that same year. Today around 850,000 people a year walk down this avenue, which makes Chenonceau the most visited private historic monument in France.

As you go, the sixteenth-century farm is on your right. On your left, in a clearing of the park, is the maze Catherine de' Medici wanted: two thousand yews covering more than a hectare. Behind it stand stone giants that once decorated the château itself, and how they ended up out in the trees is a story for the forecourt.

### 2. The Tour des Marques

Keep of the Marques family's castle, rebuilt after 1432 for Jean II Marques; remodelled after 1513 for Thomas Bohier (died 1524) and Katherine Briçonnet (died 1526) · Castle rebuilt from 1432; tower remodelled from 1513 · Stone and slate: a round keep with a stair turret, standing on the platform of a near-square castle of about 50 by 55 metres, moated on three sides · The forecourt, in front of the château's north side, beside the Tour des Marques

Audio: https://audio.chiaro.ai/landmarks/chateau-de-chenonceau/en/tour-des-marques.mp3?v=1040343 (130 s)

Look for:
- The small bell turret on the tower's roof. Its bell carries the date 1513, the year Bohier's building began.
- The white stone dormer and the mullioned windows Bohier cut into the old keep, above a parapet on small corbels.
- The well at the foot of the tower, with a chimera and the Marques family's two-headed eagle on its rim.

The round tower standing on its own beside you is the last piece of the castle that stood here before the château. When everything around it was cleared, it was kept on purpose.

In the thirteenth century this land belonged to the Marques family. There was no bridge yet; their castle watched the traffic on the river: timber, salt, wine and building stone going up and down the Cher. During the Hundred Years' War Jean Marques handed Chenonceau over to English troops, and when the French took it back in 1411 they burned it to the ground. In 1432 Jean the Second Marques was allowed to rebuild, and he built a near-square fortress on a raised platform of about fifty by fifty-five metres, moated on three sides, with the river closing the fourth and a round tower at each corner. You are standing on that platform. This tower was its south-west corner, and it is all that survives.

Thomas Bohier, a royal financier from Tours, fought the Marques heirs through the courts for years and took possession in February 1512. He razed their castle but kept the platform as a forecourt, and kept this tower and the well at its foot. Look up at the roof. He dressed the old keep in the new Renaissance fashion, with mullioned windows, white stone dormers and the little bell turret on top, whose bell carries the date 1513. And somewhere on the tower he had three letters carved, T, B and K, for Thomas Bohier and his wife, Katherine Briçonnet.

Keep her name. The estate dates the new house to between 1513 and 1517 and says it was built by Bohier and above all by his wife. The French historians add that she ran the site during his long absences. It went up on the old mill's stone piers, beyond the steps and the little bridge in front of you. Bohier's motto, S'il vient à point, me souviendra, promises roughly that, if it all comes right, people will remember him. Instead he died in Italy in 1524, an audit then found he had helped himself to public money, and in 1535 his son handed Chenonceau to King Francis the First to settle the fine.

Find the well beside the tower. On its rim are a chimera and a two-headed eagle, the badge of the Marques family, still carved on the last corner of their castle.

As for the stone giants by the maze: from 1866 the architect Félix Roguet restored the château's north side for its owner, Madame Pelouze, stripped off the four caryatids Catherine de' Medici had added, Hercules, Pallas, Apollo and Cybele, and sent them to the park.

### 3. The Grand Gallery over the Cher

Bridge by Philibert de l'Orme (d. 1570) for Diane de Poitiers, built under his brother Jean; gallery by Jean Bullant (d. 1578) with the master mason Denis Courtin for Catherine de' Medici · Bridge 1556–1559; gallery inaugurated 1577 · Tuffeau and slate floor, beamed ceiling; 60 m long and 6 m wide, with 18 windows, on a bridge of five round arches · Ground floor, at the end of the entrance vestibule, in the wing that crosses the Cher

Audio: https://audio.chiaro.ai/landmarks/chateau-de-chenonceau/en/grand-gallery.mp3?v=1283595 (160 s)

Look for:
- The floor: squares of pale tuffeau and dark slate running the full sixty metres.
- The chimneypiece at the far end. It is only a decorative frame around the south door, which leads to the far bank.
- The round portrait medallions between the windows, set up in the eighteenth century.
- Water on both sides through the eighteen windows: you are standing on Philibert de l'Orme's bridge.

Stand at this end and look down the whole length of it. Sixty metres of chequered floor, pale tuffeau and dark slate, six metres wide, under a ceiling of plain beams, with light coming in from both sides through eighteen windows. Now remember where you are. There is water under your feet, and water outside every window to your left and your right. This room is a bridge.

The bridge came first, and it was Diane de Poitiers's doing, though the idea was older. The Bohiers had been allowed to build a bridge to the far bank in 1517 and never did. King Henry the Second gave Chenonceau to Diane, his mistress, and in 1555 she commissioned Philibert de l'Orme, then at the height of royal favour, to span the river. He designed five round arches, a little narrower than the house and set off-centre, downstream, and his brother Jean built them between 1556 and 1559. Henry never walked across. In June 1559 he was mortally wounded in a tournament in Paris, and once he was dead his widow, Catherine de' Medici, quickly had Diane out of Chenonceau and into the Château de Chaumont in exchange.

Catherine had bigger plans for the bridge. Her architect Jean Bullant, with the master mason Denis Courtin, raised two galleries on top of it, one above the other, to the full height of the Bohier house. This one on the ground floor was her ballroom, inaugurated in 1577 with festivities for her son, Henry the Third. Chenonceau was already a house for parties: in 1560, celebrating another son, Francis the Second, on his accession, it saw the first fireworks display in France. Walk to the far end and look at the grand chimneypiece. It is a bluff. It is only a decorative frame around the south door, which opens on to the other bank of the river.

After that, the gallery kept being called up. During the Revolution the château was spared, the story goes, because it was the only bridge across the river for many leagues, and too useful to pull down. In August 1914 Gaston Menier turned both galleries into a military hospital with a hundred and twenty beds, seventy upstairs and fifty on this floor, where an operating theatre was set up. The state paid the doctors and nurses; Menier paid for the food and every fitting. By the last day of 1918, two thousand two hundred and fifty-four wounded soldiers had been treated here, and the painted decorations on these walls had been whitewashed because the army thought white was more hygienic.

Then came the next war. From 1940 to 1942 the demarcation line between occupied France and the so-called free zone ran through Chenonceau, one side in each. The estate says the gallery over the river became the only way through to the free zone, and that the Menier family helped people fleeing the Nazis to get across. So that door at the far end, the one inside the chimneypiece that is not really a chimneypiece, led out of one France and into another.

The round portrait medallions between the windows went up in the eighteenth century. Look at them on your way down if you like, but mostly just walk it slowly, all sixty metres, with the river running underneath the floor.

### 4. The kitchens in the piers

Built into the piers of the old mill for Thomas Bohier (d. 1524) and Katherine Briçonnet (d. 1526); fitted out anew for the 1914–1918 hospital · From 1513; equipment renewed 1914–1918 · Stone rib vaults in the mill's piers, under a near-square house of 22 by 23 metres · Basement, down the stair between the gallery and the François I bedroom

Audio: https://audio.chiaro.ai/landmarks/chateau-de-chenonceau/en/kitchens.mp3?v=918926 (115 s)

Look for:
- The fireplace, the largest in the château, under the ribbed vault of the office.
- The ribs of the vault springing from the walls: you are inside the stone piers of the old mill.
- The bridge between the office and the kitchen proper, and the butchery's hooks for hanging game.

Down the stairs, and the château changes character. The ceilings are lower and the vaults heavier. You are now below the house, inside the thing that holds it up.

Remember the mill from the forecourt. Behind the Marques castle, on the river, stood a mill on two massive stone piers, and when the Bohiers built their new house they built it straight on top of those piers. The estate says it plainly: the main house stands on the foundations of a medieval mill. It is an almost square block, twenty-two by twenty-three metres. Everything upstairs, the vestibule, the bedrooms, the start of the gallery, rests on what was once an industrial building in the river. And the kitchens fill the piers themselves, a whole suite of rooms forming one enormous stone base.

This low room is the office, the serving room, and it has two ribbed vaults over it and a fireplace that is the largest in the château. Stand back from it and you will understand where the heat of the house came from. The bread oven is next door. Beyond, the office serves the staff dining room, the larder, and the butchery, where the hooks for hanging game and the blocks for cutting it up are on show. Between the office and the kitchen proper there is a bridge. The château has a bridge in its basement as well as the famous one upstairs.

Look for the landing stage. Supplies came in by boat and were unloaded straight into the kitchen. Legend calls it Diane's Bath. The name belongs to the legend; the job it did was deliveries.

Much of what you see is not sixteenth century at all. The old fittings were replaced during the First World War with modern equipment to feed the hospital in the gallery upstairs, and the rooms had already been re-rendered and re-floored in the restoration of the eighteen-sixties and seventies.

One more fact about the ground under you. The arches of the château rest on wooden piles. In June 2016 the flooded Cher rose over much of the arches. Three years later the danger ran the other way: in the drought of 2019 the falling river left those piles exposed to harm, and the needle dam at Civray-de-Touraine was raised on the prefect's orders so that the foundations would stay permanently under water.

### 5. The west front from Catherine de' Medici's garden

House for Thomas Bohier and Katherine Briçonnet; bridge by Philibert de l'Orme (d. 1570); gallery by Jean Bullant (d. 1578); garden made for Catherine de' Medici (1519–1589) · House from 1513; bridge 1556–1559; gallery 1577; garden from the 1560s · Tuffeau and slate; the gallery 60 m long on five arches; a garden of 5,500 m² · Garden of Catherine de' Medici, west of the château, on the paths facing the west façade

Audio: https://audio.chiaro.ai/landmarks/chateau-de-chenonceau/en/west-front-from-catherines-garden.mp3?v=1041388 (130 s)

Look for:
- The five arches of Philibert de l'Orme's bridge, and Catherine de' Medici's gallery riding on top of them to the far bank.
- The Tour des Marques at the left end, the last piece of the castle that stood here before the château.
- The west front itself: the side the nineteenth-century restorer left almost untouched, apart from the balcony and the window mullions.

Turn and face the château from the garden paths. This is the west front, and from here you can read the whole building in one sentence. At the left, the north end, the Tour des Marques on its own. Next to it, Bohier's white house with its turrets at the corners, out in the river on its mill. Then, to the right, the long gallery on its five arches, walking straight across the Cher to the woods on the far bank.

The garden you are in was Catherine de' Medici's, laid out after 1559 just downstream of the old Marques terrace. The estate gives it as 5,500 square metres, smaller than Diane's garden on the other side of the house: five panels of lawn around a round basin. There is a pleasing spite in the arrangement. The two rivals ended up with a garden each, one on either side of the tower.

This west front is also the most honest face of the building. When Félix Roguet restored the château in the nineteenth century he reworked the north and east sides heavily, but this one he changed least: only the big balcony and the window mullions.

Catherine wanted far more. An engraving published by Jacques Androuet du Cerceau in 1579 shows her plan: a vast palace closing round the existing buildings like pincers. On the far bank the work was started and then stopped, nobody knows why, and toothing stones still stick out of the masonry there, waiting for a pavilion that never came.

When Catherine died in January 1589 the château passed to her daughter-in-law, Louise of Lorraine, and in August Louise learned here that her husband, Henry the Third, had been assassinated. She spent the next eleven years here in mourning, dressed in white, as the widow of a French king was expected to be, and she became known as the White Queen.

Later the house filled with talk. Claude Dupin bought it in 1733, and his wife Louise's salon drew Voltaire, Montesquieu, Fontenelle and Buffon. Her secretary was Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who remembered it in his Confessions: they played music, staged comedies, and he wrote a poem called Sylvie's Path, after a path in the park along the river.

The stone in front of you was restored within living memory. Between 2009 and March 2012 the façades of the house and the outside of the gallery were restored, with a scaffold twenty-eight metres high that needed divers to anchor it in the riverbed. It cost 4.8 million euros, and the owners paid two thirds of it. That clean white wall, standing on five arches in the brown water, is what their money bought.

## Before you go

The postal address is 37150 Chenonceaux, in Indre-et-Loire. The ticket office and the shop are at the entrance to the estate, and the shop is free to go into; the château stands at the far end of the plane-tree avenue. The first stop is played at the entrance, looking in along the avenue.

Chenonceaux has its own station, about 400 metres from the ticket office, 25 minutes from Tours by TER regional train. From Paris, the TGV from Montparnasse reaches Saint-Pierre-des-Corps, the Tours station, in about an hour. By road the château is 214 km from Paris and 34 km from Tours, about two hours from Paris on the A10, leaving at the Blois or Amboise exit.

- The times the château publishes are ticket office hours, the last moment you can go in: the château itself closes half an hour later and the gardens half an hour after that. Between 28 September and 1 November 2026 the ticket office keeps 9am to 5.30pm, and between 2 November and 4 December 9.30am to 4.30pm, with a few longer December days; summer hours are longer, and the official calendar lists each period.
- On the public-holiday weekends, Easter, 1 May, 8 May, Ascension and Pentecost, booking online is compulsory. Outside those weekends the estate dropped timed slots and reservations in 2024, and tickets can still be bought ahead on the official site.
- Individual prices for 2026, leaflet ticket first and audioguide ticket second: adults 19 and 24 euros, over-65s and students 16 and 21, children aged seven to eighteen 15 and 20, and under-sevens free. Holders of a disability card go in free, and a companion pays 16 euros.
- A fitted ramp leads into the château and wheelchairs can be borrowed free of charge against an ID. When it is very busy, pushchairs may be kept out of the château, so a baby carrier is the safer choice; dogs are welcome on a lead in the gardens, and small ones must be carried inside.

Official tickets: https://www.chenonceau.com/en/practical-information/ticket-prices/

Every Chenonceau ticket comes with a guide of some kind. The standard admission includes a printed guide leaflet; the version with the estate's audioguide, collected on site, costs 5 euros more, so an adult pays 24 euros instead of 19 and a child aged 7 to 18 pays 20 instead of 15, while under-sevens go free with the leaflet and are not offered the audioguide. For visitors with reduced mobility the château also has a video tour of each room. These five recordings sit beside all of that at no cost, start at the estate gate, and carry their scripts in print under each player for the moments when the Cher is louder than your earphones.

Official site: https://www.chenonceau.com/en/

## Questions

**Is there a free Château de Chenonceau audio guide?**

Yes: you are reading it. Five recorded places, from the estate entrance to Catherine de' Medici's garden, cost nothing here, need only a browser, and come with every word of the script underneath. The estate's own audioguide is not free; it adds 5 euros to the admission price. Beyond these five, photograph any painting, fireplace or ceiling with Chiaro and it tells you about that too.

**Can I listen to the Château de Chenonceau audio guide without a ticket?**

The recordings play anywhere, and the first is meant for the estate entrance, before you go in, looking along the plane-tree avenue. The forecourt, the house, the kitchens and the gardens are all inside the estate, so the other four need admission, which in 2026 is 19 euros for an adult with the printed leaflet.

**How much is the official Château de Chenonceau audio guide?**

It is built into the ticket price rather than sold separately: an adult ticket with the audioguide is 24 euros against 19 with the leaflet, so the device costs 5 euros more. Over-65s and students pay 21 with it and a child of seven to eighteen pays 20, while under-sevens cannot have one. Individual visitors collect it on site.

**Is Chenonceau open on Christmas Day and New Year's Day?**

Yes. The estate says the château and gardens are open every day, all year long, and its 2026 calendar has the ticket office open from 9.30am to 6pm between 19 and 25 December. The listed times are last admission; the château closes half an hour later.

**Where does the Château de Chenonceau audio guide begin?**

At the entrance to the estate, by the ticket office and the shop, facing down the avenue of plane trees. The second stop is at the far end of the avenue, on the forecourt beside the round Tour des Marques, and from there you go into the house.

**Where is the gallery over the Cher at Chenonceau?**

On the ground floor, at the far end of the entrance vestibule: the house opens straight into it. It is the 60-metre ballroom Catherine de' Medici built on Philibert de l'Orme's bridge, 6 metres wide with 18 windows, and it is the third stop on this page.

## Continue in the app

Point Chiaro at anything at the Château de Chenonceau.

About twenty rooms are open in the house, hung with tapestries and with paintings the estate credits to painters from Rubens to Murillo among many others, and five stops cannot begin to cover them. Frame a portrait of Diane de Poitiers, an interlaced monogram on a ceiling or a Flemish tapestry in your phone's camera, and Chiaro explains who owned it and what it is doing in this house, then takes whatever you ask next.

Download Chiaro: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id6745618830?pt=127817940&ct=chateau-de-chenonceau-md&mt=8