The chateau of Cheverny is unique among most of the castles in the Loire Valley in that it has been owned by the same family since 1315, with one brief interruption (1537 to 1564). The current building was erected in the early 17th century and is the only estate to retain many of its original furnishings. It has been open to the public since 1922. The Hureault/deVibraye family still lives in the chateau, occupying about 10 percent of the building while the remaining rooms are available to the tourist visitor.

The chateau offers some interesting marvels: The large drawing room has a Titian portrait of Cosimo de Medici; the gallery contains a framed document about the Society of the Cincinnati signed by George Washington, a co-founder of the society, and a group of officers in the Revolutionary War that included three ancestors of the owners. In the tapestry room are two clocks: a Louis XV balance-wheel clock that still works and provides the day, date, time and phase of the moon, and a mystery clock by Robert Houdin. Outside the chateau is an orangerie where many art works were hidden during World War II, including the Mona Lisa.  We visited but only saw (and purchased) chocolate chip cookies from the restaurant to munch while we strolled the pretty gardens.

Two special exhibits in the chateau caught our attention during the visit.  Outside the dining room are posters on table settings through the ages. Did you know Napoleon demanded that knives and forks be pointed toward the body when placed on the table because he always caught his lace cuffs in their points when reaching for his wine?  And knives were the only cutlery at the table for some time, employed in spearing meats from the serving plate and picking teeth.

Lego blocks were the medium for the second exhibit. Bedrooms and other small rooms contained film scenes built of Legos. Over one million plastic bricks and several months effort resulted in life-size models from Hitchcock’s “The Birds” and Inspector Colombo down on all fours looking for clues, and from other well-known movies. Maurice and I found it disconcerting to peer into a beautiful library, its glass door bookshelves containing beautiful leather-bound books, and see Hercule Point in Legos sitting on a chair. Somehow, it broke the chateau mood….

Cheverny maintains a kennel of over 100 Anglo-French hounds for hunting 25 deer annually, the local limit. You can watch the kennel master feed the dogs in a youtube video. The estate’s park supports 70 stags, 200 wild boar, and 11 horses.

Perhaps the chateau is most famous in France for serving as a model castle in a Tintin series — the mythical Marlinspike Hall owned by the equally mythical Captain Haddock. There is a Tintin museum on the property, but we did not visit it.