Chateau de Chinon
— the long white wall above a slow river.
Not only on a wall.
“A long white fortress on a ridge above the Vienne, in the western Loire. Tuffeau limestone, soft and pale, easy to carve and slow to weather, gives the walls their cream colour. Henry II of England held court here in the twelfth century. Joan of Arc walked up from the town in March of 1429 and recognised the future Charles VII in a crowd that had been arranged to fool her. The fortress stretches more than four hundred metres along the ridge. Below it, Cabernet Franc vines drop down to the river. Late afternoon, the stone catches the western light and reads almost gold.
Chateau de Chinon, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
Château de Chinon stands on a long ridge of tuffeau limestone above the Vienne river, in the commune of Chinon in Indre-et-Loire, about 50 kilometres southwest of Tours. The fortress runs more than 400 metres along the cliff and is divided into three enclosures: the Fort Saint-Georges on the east, the Château du Milieu with the royal apartments in the centre, and the Fort du Coudray on the west, where the Tour du Coudray still carries the graffiti carved by Templar prisoners held there in 1308. The first stone keep was raised around 954 by Theobald I, Count of Blois; Henry II Plantagenet rebuilt the fortress in the twelfth century and died within its walls on 6 July 1189.
The walls are built of tuffeau, the pale chalky limestone that gives the Loire valley its bright stonework. Quarried from cretaceous deposits along the river since the eleventh century, tuffeau is soft enough to carve fresh from the ground and hardens as it dries, which is why every Renaissance château from Amboise to Azay-le-Rideau wears the same cream colour. The stone reads almost white at midday and turns gold in late afternoon. It weathers visibly: rain pits the surface, lichen takes hold on the cooler faces, and the curtain walls of Chinon have been patched and re-patched for nearly a thousand years.
The fortress is open daily through the year under the name Forteresse Royale de Chinon, managed by the Conseil départemental d'Indre-et-Loire. Hours run roughly 9:30 to 19:00 in high summer and shorten through autumn into a 9:30 to 17:00 winter window. The site has been heavily restored since 2003, with the royal logis re-roofed, the Tour de l'Horloge reopened as the main visitor entrance from the eastern Fort Saint-Georges, and a scenic lift cut into the cliff face. The town of Chinon below holds about 8,000 residents and is the centre of the Chinon AOC, where Cabernet Franc has been grown on the south-facing slopes of the Vienne since the Middle Ages.