Chapelle Sainte-Radegonde

Chinon (French pronunciation: [ʃinɔ̃] ) is a commune in the Indre-et-Loire department, Centre-Val de Loire, France. The traditional province around Chinon, Touraine, became a favorite resort of French kings and their nobles beginning in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. The Renaissance châteaux which they built new or erected on the foundations of old fortresses earned this part of the Loire Valley the nickname "The Garden of France." Chinon played an important and strategic role during the Middle Ages, serving both French and English kings. Chinon is known for its wine, castle, and historic town. Its part of the Loire Valley has been registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000.

The canton of Chinon is an administrative division of the Indre-et-Loire department, central France. Its borders were modified at the French canton reorganisation which came into effect in March 2015. Its seat is in Chinon. It consists of the following communes:

The Château de Chinon is a château located on the north bank of the river Vienne in Chinon, central France. It was founded by Theobald I, Count of Blois. In the 11th century the castle became the property of the counts of Anjou. In 1156 Henry II of England, a member of the House of Anjou, took the castle from his brother Geoffrey, Count of Nantes, after Geoffrey rebelled for a second time. Henry favoured the Château de Chinon as a residence. Most of the standing structure can be attributed to his reign; he died there in 1189. Early in the 13th century, King Philip II of France harassed the English lands in France, and in 1205 he captured Chinon after a siege that lasted several months. Thereafter, the castle remained under French control. When King Philip IV accused the Knights Templar of heresy during the first decade of the 14th century, several leading members of the order were imprisoned there. Used as a residence by Charles VII in the 15th century, the Château de Chinon became a prison in the second half of the 16th century, but then fell out of use and was left to decay. It was recognized as a monument historique by the French Ministry of Culture in 1840. The castle, which contains a museum, is now owned and managed by the Indre-et-Loire General Council and is a major tourist attraction. It was restored in the early 21st century, at a cost of €14.5 million.

The arrondissement of Chinon is an arrondissement of France in the Indre-et-Loire department in the Centre-Val de Loire region. It has 106 communes. Its population is 103,540 (2021), and its area is 2,296.5 km2 (886.7 sq mi).

Rivière (French pronunciation: [ʁivjɛʁ] ) is a commune in the Indre-et-Loire department in central France.

Huismes (French pronunciation: [ɥim]) is a commune in the Indre-et-Loire department in central France.

Beaumont-en-Véron (French pronunciation: [bomɔ̃ ɑ̃ veʁɔ̃] ) is a commune in the Indre-et-Loire department in central France. Since 2016, the castle has been home to Pontourny, the first deradicalisation centre for young people in France. By 2017, the centre was empty but remained open.

Avoine (French pronunciation: [avwan] ) is a commune in the Indre-et-Loire department in central France.

La Chapelle-sur-Loire (French pronunciation: [la ʃapɛl syʁ lwaʁ] , literally The Chapel on Loire) is a commune in the Indre-et-Loire department in central France.

Saint-Benoît-la-Forêt (French pronunciation: [sɛ̃ bənwa la fɔʁɛ] ) is a commune in the Indre-et-Loire department in central France.

Ussé is a castle in the Indre-et-Loire département, in France. The stronghold at the edge of the Chinon forest overlooking the Indre Valley was first fortified in the eleventh century by the Norman seigneur of Ussé, Gueldin de Saumur, who surrounded the fort with a palisade on a high terrace. The site passed to the Comte de Blois, who rebuilt it in stone. In the fifteenth century, the ruined castle of Ussé was purchased by Jean V de Bueil, a captain-general of Charles VII who became seigneur of Ussé in 1431 and began rebuilding it in the 1440s; his son Antoine de Bueil married in 1462 Jeanne de Valois, the biological daughter of Charles VII and Agnès Sorel, who brought as dowry 40000 golden écus. Antoine was heavily in debt and in 1455, sold the château to Jacques d’Espinay, son of a chamberlain to the Duke of Brittany and himself chamberlain to the king; Espinay built the chapel, completed by his son Charles in 1612, in which the Flamboyant Gothic style is mixed with new Renaissance motifs, and began the process of rebuilding the fifteenth-century château that resulted in the sixteenth-seventeenth century aspect of the structure to be seen today. In the seventeenth century Louis I de Valentinay, comptroller of the royal household, demolished the north range of buildings in order to open the interior court to the views over the parterre terrace, to a design ascribed to André Le Nôtre. Valentinay's son-in-law was the military engineer Vauban, who visited Ussé on numerous occasions. Charles Perrault, author of the versions of several of the most famous fairy tales known today, often visited the castle and was a guest there. He had the castle of Ussé in mind when writing "The Sleeping Beauty". Later, the castle passed to the Rohan. In 1802 Ussé was purchased by the duc de Duras; as early as March 1813, low-key meetings were held at Ussé among a group of Bourbon loyalists, who met to sound out the possibilities of a Bourbon Restoration: such men as Trémouille, duc de Fitzjames, the prince de Polignac, Ferrand, Montmorency and the duc de Rochefoucault attended. Here later François-René de Chateaubriand worked on his Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe as the guest of duchesse Claire de Duras. In 1885 the comtesse de la Rochejaquelein bequeathed Ussé to her great-nephew, the comte de Blacas. Today the château belongs to his descendant Casimir de Blacas d' Aulps the 7th Duke of Blacas. Famed for its picturesque aspect, Ussé was the subject of a French railroad poster issued by the Chemin de Fer de Paris à Orléans in the 1920s and was one of several that inspired Walt Disney in the creation of many of the Disney Castles. Ussé was classified as a monument historique in 1931 by the French Ministry of Culture.

The Indre (French pronunciation: [ɛ̃dʁ] ) is a 279.3 km (173.5 mi) long river in central France, a left tributary to the Loire. Its source is in the department of Cher, near Préveranges. It flows through the departments of Cher, Indre and Indre-et-Loire. It flows generally northwest, through the communes of La Châtre, Châteauroux and Loches. It joins the Loire near the site of the Chinon nuclear power plant, north of Avoine. Its main tributary is the Indrois, which joins at Azay-sur-Indre. A smaller tributary is the Trégonce. Departments and towns along the river: Cher Indre: La Châtre, Châteauroux Indre-et-Loire: Loches