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The court of the Loire Valley Castle of Chaumont-sur-Loire (Loir et Cher) - Centre Val de Loire - France. The fortress of Chaumont-sur-Loire was built around the year 1000 to keep watch over the border between the counties of Blois and Anjou. In 1465, Louis XI had the castle burned but it was rebuilt just a few years later. It was owned by the Amboise family for a goog 500 years, and it was Charles II d'Amboise who turned it into an ornemental castle in the Renaissance style. In 1750, Jacques-Donatien Le Ray ordered the destruction of the north wing, so opening up a view of the Loire river. In 1875 Marie-Charlotte Say purchased the castle and married Prince de Broglie. She decorated its rooms with Renaissance furniture and herself oversaw all the work required to make the residence worthy of the great receptions she was to host there. Ceded to the French State in 1938, Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire has been the property of the Centre Val de Loire Region since 2007 and has become an unmissable site within the spheres of Art and Gardens.
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France is affectionately referred to as "the Hexagon" for its overall shape.French history goes back to the Gauls, a Celtic tribe which inhabited the area circa 300BC until being conquered by Julius Caesar.The Franks were the first tribe to adopt Catholic Christianity after the Roman Empire collapsed. France became an independent location in the Treaty of Verdun in (843 AD), which divided up Charlemagne's Carolingian Empire into several portions.The French monarchy reached its zenith during the reign of Louis XIV, the Sun King, who stood for seventy-two years as the Monarch of all Monarchs. His palace of Versailles and its Hall of Mirrors are a splendid treasure-trove of Baroque art.The French Revolution ended the rule of the monarchy with the motto "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!" On July 14th, 1789 angry mobs stormed La Bastille prison and began the Revolution in which Louis XVI, his wife Marie-Antoinette and thousands of others met the guillotine.One decade after the revolution, Napolean Bonaparte seized control of the Republic and named himself Emperor. His armies conquered most of Europe and his Napoleonic Code became a lasting legal foundation for concepts of personal status and property.During the period of colonization France controlled the largest empire in the world, second only to Britain.France is one of the founding members of the European Union and the United Nations, as well as one of the nuclear armed nations of the world.Text by Steve Smith.
