Château du Paradis
CastleHidden Treasure
Château du Paradis, located in La Croix-en-Touraine (Indre-et-Loire), is a Renaissance château built in the 16th century. The monument is currently closed to visitors.
Key facts
- Type
- Castle
- Period
- Renaissance (16th century)
- Location
- La Croix-en-Touraine, Indre-et-Loire, Centre-Val de Loire
- Visit
- Closed to visitors
- GPS
- 47.3663, 1.0113
- Mérimée Reference
- PA00097729
Just outside Amboise, Château du Paradis combines Renaissance elegance and 18th-century refinement, with wood panelling and a fireplace from prestigious Touraine hotels.
© Wikimedia Commons / Wikipedia
History
Nestling in the gentle countryside of La Croix-en-Touraine, a few leagues from Amboise, Château du Paradis fully lives up to the promise of its name. This aristocratic manor house, whose foundations date back to the end of the 15th century, boasts an architecture with two layers, where Renaissance sobriety meets 18th-century classical elegance in surprising harmony. What really sets Château du Paradis apart is not so much its beautiful but discreet silhouette as the exceptional quality of its interiors. One of the rooms on the ground floor houses a collection of extremely rare furnishings: wood panelling and a painted ceiling taken from the Hôtel Joyeuse in Amboise, and a majestic stone fireplace rescued from the Château de Chanteloup, the Duc de Choiseul's sumptuous folly that no longer exists. These pieces make up a veritable fragmentary museum of Touraine's decorative art. The visitor experience combines the intimacy of an estate kept away from the big crowds with the richness of a concentrated heritage. The projecting stair turret on the south façade, evidence of the first Renaissance château, contrasts delightfully with the regular eighteenth-century wings. To the north-east, a 16th-century fuye - a cylindrical dovecote - is a reminder that this fiefdom was a lively agricultural estate as much as a prestigious residence. The undulating Touraine countryside envelops the château in the generous vegetation typical of the rural estates of the Loire. Far from the hustle and bustle of the star castles of the UNESCO-listed Loire Valley, Château du Paradis is for lovers of authentic heritage, curious about architecture and interior history, and looking to get off the beaten track to discover what Touraine still has in store.
Architecture
Château du Paradis has a composite architecture, the result of two construction campaigns separated by almost two centuries. The original main building, built in the late 15th or early 16th century, is notable for its windows framed by pilasters - an ornamental motif characteristic of the early Touraine Renaissance, which was influenced by the Italian architecture of the royal construction sites at Amboise and Blois. The polygonal or circular stair turret projecting from the south facade is the most expressive feature of this early phase, recalling contemporary Loire manor houses in their vertical design and taste for sculpted decoration. The transformations orchestrated by the Duc de Choiseul in the last third of the 18th century gave the château its current scale and dominant visual unity. The rebuilt east wing and the north and south extensions bear witness to sober classical architecture, with its emphasis on the regularity of the bays, the symmetry of the openings and the ornamental discretion typical of provincial neoclassical taste. The local materials - the white tufa stone so characteristic of the Loire Valley - give the building the golden luminosity and gentle minerality that distinguish Touraine architecture. To the north-east, the cylindrical 16th-century fuye, a former seigniorial outbuilding, completes the picture of an authentic feudal estate. The interiors are decorated to an exceptional standard: sculpted woodwork and a painted ceiling from the Hôtel Joyeuse in Amboise sit alongside a large stone fireplace from Chanteloup, forming a decorative ensemble that is heterogeneous in its origins but remarkably homogenous in its refinement, a veritable anthology of interior décor from the Renaissance and Classicism periods in Touraine.
Related Figures
Étienne-François de Choiseul, duc de Choiseul — ministre de Louis XV, acquéreur du domaine en 1767 et principal maître d'œuvre de sa transformationSeigneurs des Cartes — suzerains médiévaux dont relevait le fief du ParadisCardinal Georges Ier d'Amboise — propriétaire présumé de l'hôtel Joyeuse d'Amboise dont proviennent les boiseriesPremiers seigneurs du Paradis — bâtisseurs anonymes du manoir Renaissance de la fin du XVe siècle
Tags
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Château du Paradis located?
Château du Paradis is located in La Croix-en-Touraine, Indre-et-Loire department, Centre-Val de Loire region, France.
When was Château du Paradis built?
Château du Paradis dates back to a period built during the Renaissance (16th century).
Is Château du Paradis open to visitors?
Château du Paradis is currently closed to visitors.