The area of the castles of the loire valley extends over three ancient provincies: Orleanais, Touraine and

Anjou, and down as far as the north of Berry. It is outlined around the great loop which the Loire forms, moving up towards the northwest, from Gien to Orleans, then down to Anjou. Its tributaries, the Loir, the CIsse, the Cosson and the Beuvron, the Cher, Indre and Indrois, Vienne, Thouet, Layon and Maine complete the main section of the river and define a vast, rich area, united by its history. After the Gallo-Roman peace, the barbaric age commenced, folloew by restoration of power by the Merovingians, and finally the Carolingian Renaissance. During these centuries of upheavals, the valley of the Loire was an important seat of development and of the spread of Christianity, with the start of the apostolate of Saint Martin, bishop of Tours, who died at Candes in 397. The setting-up of a church, which inherited the Roman civilization, administration and language, was accompanied by the introduction of a clerical hierarchy and power, naturally spiritual, but also capable of reaplacing faultering earthly power, of gathering together the population, of tackling invaders, and finally of supporting the restoration of a lay order, providing the Merovingian, ad later Carolingian princes with the most of their ministers. This role of the clergy is testified by the Roman and pre-Roman abbeys, priories and churches which line the river and its tributaries. Throughout the course of history, bishops and abbots continued to counterbalance the power of the great feudat lords who, from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, contested Orleanais, Touraine and Anjou, the counts of Blois against the counts of Anjou. There are traces everywhere of their struggles, finally ended by Philip Augustus by annexing the heritage of Anjou. Alas this heritage led to the Hundred Years War. The count of Anjou, Henry II Plantagenet, had received the crown of England from his mother. His descendant, Edward II of England, having married Isabelle of France, daughter of Philip the Fair, last of the Capetians, his son in turn claimed the crown of France, worn by the Valois cousins. During this eventful war, the Loire valley (Orleanais, Berry Touraine and Anjou) was the trusted refuge of the French side: Paris, the capital of the kingdom, had surrendered to the Anglo-Burgundians, mad King Charles VI was their hostage. Charles VII, the dauphin, moved his fragile power and the royal administration to the Loire, travelling endlessly, as was the custom of the monarchy up to the eighteenth century, from one town, one castle, to the other, so that from Gien to Chinon, Saumur or Angers, the King felt at home. Thus, from one end of the Loire area to another, we come across him. Princes of royal blood, great lords, ministers and servants, under his reign or that of his successors, bought and built, creating an exceptional wealth of historical castles. From the Loire Valley (where he was based) Louis XI rebuilt, stone after stone, his kingdom and reestablished centralised power. His son, Charle VIII, opened the Loire valley to the influence of the Italian Renaissance, discovered during compaigns in Italy. After him, Louis XII, then Fracis I and his successors, prolonged the union between the civilisations of France and Italy. Henry II married the Florentine Catherine de Medicis. The calamities of the civil war, with a religious pretext, bloodied the valley in the second half of the sixteenth century,

but did not jeopardise the prodigious expansion of the region which, even after the return of power to the Ile de France, which had begun under the reign of Francis I, kept its privileges of a Royal seat. It is true to say that the castles of the Loire valley would not be the same without the sky, the landscape and setting: forests well-stocked with game for the royal hunts, providing wood for joiners, cabinetmakers and wheelwrights, pastures for the flocks, limestone plateaus providing quarries and stone cutters with material for abbeys, churches, ramparts and castles.