The Château de Chenonceau

Getting there

At the start of the castle's great avenue are the ticket office, the car parks and Chenonceaux station. From Amboise you get there by motorhome through the forest, by bus or by bicycle.

• By motorhome: the castle has a car park reserved for motorhomes, but does not say whether you pay or whether you can stay the night. To sleep there is the Chenonceaux stopover, eight hundred metres away, and the operator recommends walking there along the chemin de la Varenne, which leads to the Cher; then the free stopover of the Caves du Père Auguste, two kilometres away on the road to Amboise, and the stopover and the campsite of Bléré, seven kilometres away. The stopovers are on the Amboise page
• By bus from Amboise: line C of Rémi, the regional bus, runs every day, public holidays included; according to the timetable in force from 1 September 2026 it leaves Amboise Théâtre at 9:58 and reaches the castle at 10:25, or at 13:20 and arrives at 13:46, and leaves the castle again at 13:20, in Amboise at 13:44, or at 18:05, in Amboise at 18:31
• By train: from Tours to Chenonceaux the regional train takes twenty-five minutes, and the station is four hundred metres from the ticket office
• By bicycle: from Amboise it is twenty kilometres, following the signs of loop 47 through the forest and then the Cœur de France à Vélo cycle path, which passes in front of the Chenonceaux motorhome stopover. At the castle there is a bicycle park, and the lockers for bags are free

Practical information

Half a day: an hour for the castle and an hour for the gardens, and the rest for the maze, the flower garden, the farm and perhaps the boat under the arches. Arrive at opening time; you can have a picnic in the park.

Contacts

Where it is

Chenonceaux · Centro-Valle della Loira

You set off from

Notes

• The 2026 opening hours: the castle and the gardens are open every day, all year, and the time given is the last entry at the ticket office: from 4 April to 3 July from 9:00 to 18:00, with the castle closing half an hour later and the gardens another half hour after that; on the long weekends around the public holidays of April and May from 9:00 to 19:00, with online booking compulsory; from 4 July to 23 August from 9:00 to 19:00; from 24 August to 27 September from 9:00 to 18:00; from 28 September to 1 November from 9:00 to 17:30; in November and December from 9:30 to 16:30, with longer opening hours on the December weekends and over the holidays, until 18:30 from 26 to 31 December; from 5 January to 3 April from 9:30 to 16:30. The 2027 opening hours have not yet been published; the tourist office gives the castle as open every day in 2027 too
• The 2026 tickets, with the castle and the gardens: 19 euros with the booklet and 24 with the audio guide, which you pick up on site; from 65 years and for students 16 and 21; from 7 to 18 years 15 and 20; under 7 years free. A family with at least three paying children pays 15 euros per person. The audio guide speaks twelve languages, Italian included. The online ticket is only valid in the year it is bought, and also includes the queen's apothecary and the exhibition galleries. The combined ticket with the Château royal d'Amboise and the Clos Lucé can only be bought online, on the website of the Château d'Amboise, and the ticket desk of the Amboise tourist office gives adults 1 euro off
• The great avenue: from the ticket office you enter the park, seventy hectares, along the avenue between two rows of plane trees; on the left, in a clearing, is the maze that Catherine de' Medici wanted, two thousand yews over more than a hectare, with a raised gazebo in the middle from which you can see all of it. On the entrance terrace stands the Tour des Marques, the keep with the well, the only thing left of the medieval castle of the Marques lords, which Bohier had razed
• The castle: some twenty rooms open, with Renaissance furniture, tapestries and paintings from the collection, including works by Clouet, Murillo, Tintoretto, Poussin, Correggio, Rubens, Primaticcio and Van Loo's The Three Graces. From the vestibule, covered with rib vaults, on one side are the guards' room, the chapel, Diane de Poitiers' bedroom and the Cabinet vert, the study from which Catherine governed the kingdom; on the other the staircase to the kitchens, Francis I's bedroom and the Louis XIV drawing room. The chapel's stained glass windows were destroyed by a bombing raid in July 1944 and remade by Max Ingrand
• The gallery: sixty metres over the river, six wide, eighteen windows, a chequered floor of tufa and slate and a beamed ceiling. Catherine de' Medici had it built on top of Diane's bridge, and gave her parties and balls there. On the floor above is the Galerie Médicis, with paintings, tapestries and furniture. In the Great War Gaston Menier turned it into a military hospital, at his own expense, with Simonne Menier as head nurse: a plaque commemorates the wounded treated here
• The kitchens in the piers: in the basement, inside the piers of the old mill, the scullery with the largest fireplace in the castle, the bread oven, the staff dining room, the butchery with its hooks for game and the pantry. From the landing stage, which legend calls Diane's bath, goods arrived from the river
• The gardens: the garden of Diane de Poitiers, a parterre of twelve thousand square metres on the water, which still keeps the layout Diane wanted, with today's design by Achille Duchêne; the garden of Catherine de' Medici, more intimate, of five thousand five hundred square metres, also on the water; the Jardin Vert, the English-style park, and the new garden dedicated to the landscape designer Russell Page. From April the gardens are in flower
• The farm and the flower garden: beyond the gardens is the sixteenth century farm, with Catherine de' Medici's stables and the workshop of the castle's florists, who make the bouquets for the rooms and can be watched at work. Next to it, the Potager des Fleurs, more than a hectare, with twelve squares edged with apple trees and standard roses and about a hundred varieties of cut flowers; then the carriage gallery, the reconstructed Great War hospital and the donkey enclosure
• The ladies of Chenonceau: Katherine Briçonnet built the castle while her husband was away; in 1535 Francis I took it into the royal domain for Bohier's debts; Henry II gave it to Diane de Poitiers outright, and this is how, having left the royal domain, two centuries later it escaped the Revolution. After Henry II died, on 10 July 1559, Catherine de' Medici sent Diane away and took the castle. Louise of Lorraine, wife of Henry III, was widowed in 1589 and withdrew here to pray, dressed in white. In the eighteenth century Louise Dupin held a literary salon here, with Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau, who was her secretary, and saved the castle during the Revolution. In the nineteenth century Marguerite Pelouze restored it at enormous expense, until the scandal of the decorations sold by her brother Daniel Wilson, son-in-law of President Jules Grévy, forced Grévy to resign. In 1913 Henri Menier bought it
• The war: in the First World War the hospital in the galleries, with more than two thousand wounded; between 1940 and 1942 the castle straddled the demarcation line, and the gallery was the only way into the free zone: the Menier family helped those fleeing to cross in secret. On 7 July 1944 a bombing raid destroyed the chapel's stained glass windows
• Eating at the castle: the Orangerie, with brunch every day from midday to 15:00 and the tea room; the Snack in the old stables of the Dômes, with hot dishes from 11:00 to 14:30; the Crêperie, near the ticket office, open every day; a food truck near Diane's garden. Picnics are held in the equipped areas along the moats, at the entrance and in a covered one at the far end of the Parking Vert
• The Cave des Dômes: the castle's wine cellar, under sixteenth century vaults near the old stables, open every day, where you can taste and buy the wines of the castle, of Touraine and of Touraine-Chenonceaux; in 2024 three wines at the counter cost 4.50 euros
• By boat under the arches: the castle does not hire out boats. La Bélandre leaves from the Chisseaux lock, two kilometres upstream, in rue de la Plage: a fifty minute cruise with commentary, under the arches of the castle and beyond. In May, June and September it leaves at 11:00, 15:15 and 16:15 without booking, in July and August also at 14:15 and 17:30, in March, April and October by booking only, and always with at least fifteen people, and in 2027 the season runs from 1 March to 9 November; 13 euros for adults and 8 from 4 to 12 years, in a price list that does not give the year. On board you pay in cash or by cheque, by card only at the office; phone +33 2 47 23 98 64. From the same place the canoes of BASE Aventure leave, with routes for families, from six years, that pass under the arches: open from 20 March to 20 November 2027, ask for the route and the price on +33 6 80 33 05 75
• Between late April and early May 2027: the zone B school holidays end on 2 May; Thursday 6 May is Ascension Day, and with 8 May the long weekend lasts until Sunday 9. In 2026 the castle required online booking on all the long weekends, the Ascension one from Thursday to Sunday: the calendar for 2027 has not been published, and Wednesday 5 May, outside the long weekend, is the quietest day. In May 2026 there were guided tours at closing time on some evenings, with the gardens illuminated

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