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All six kings of the sixteenth century spent time at the Chateau de Blois (daily: mid-March to Nov 9am-6pm; rest of year 9am-noon & 2-5pm; 35F/?3.34), and in the early nineteenth century it was given to Louis XVIII's brother to keep him away from Paris. Hence the courtiers' mansions that fill the town and, given its earlier non-royal ownerships, the chateau's architectural montage of distinct, unmatching wings - medieval, Gothic, Renaissance and Classical. Much of the chateau can be visited, from its oldest part - the thirteenth-century manorial assembly hall of the Salle des Etats - to the Flamboyant Gothic east wing of Louis XII and the Italianate north wing of Francois I, with its double loggias and gallery, and the great staircase with the spiralling balconies and its windows not quite in alignment. The Blois horror story is the murder by Henri III of the Duc de Guise and his brother, the cardinal of Lorraine, the perpetrators of the summary execution of Huguenots at Amboise . The king had summoned the States-General to a meeting in the Grande Salle, only to find that an overwhelming majority supported the Duke, along with the stringing up of Protestants, and aristocratic rather than royal power. He panicked and had de Guise ambushed and hacked to death in a corridor of the palace. The cardinal was murdered in prison the next day. Their deaths were avenged a year later when a monk assassinated the king himself. The chateau was also home to Henri III's mother and manipulator, Catherine de Medicis, who died here a few days after the murders in 1589. The most famous of her suite of rooms is the study, where, according to Alexander Dumas, she kept poison hidden in secret caches in the skirting boards and behind some of the 237 narrow carved wooden panels. In the nineteenth century, revolutionaries were tried in the Grande Salle for conspiring to assassinate Napoleon III, a year before the Paris Commune of 1870. Otherwise, the interior of the chateau is wonderfully colourful, or dreadfully garish if you're a purist, thanks to the mid-nineteenth-century restoration. The floors have intricate designs in tiling or parquet, walls are painted with repeating patterns, and the arches, pillars and fireplaces of the superb Salle des Etats are a riot of colour. Two ornamental regal emblems recur ostentatiously: the porcupine in Louis XII's wing and the salamander in that of Francois I. In addition, the chateau houses three small museums : the Beaux-Arts , with plenty of regal portraits and a rather good collection of forged ironwork, including locks and keys; a set of seventeenth-century sculptures in white Loire tufa, rescued from many of the neighbouring chateaux before their detail weathered away; and an archeological collection , with several fine examples of Merovingian and Carolingian glass and ceramics. Finally, it's worth visiting the extraordinary church of St Nicholas , just below the chateau on rue St-Laumen. Though altered greatly over the centuries, for the most part it is a stunning example of twelfth-century church architecture.
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