Château de Villandry

Château de Villandry is a Loire Valley château in central France noted primarily for its extensive Renaissance-style gardens. The present house dates to the early 16th century and sits above a formal sequence of terraces.

The site is best known for its highly geometric ornamental flower beds, water garden, and the famous potager - a decorative vegetable garden arranged in patterned beds. Visitors commonly combine a tour of the château’s interiors with a walk through the layered gardens.

The château was rebuilt in the early 1500s on the site of an earlier medieval fortress and underwent major restoration and garden redesign in the early 20th century. The gardens as seen today reflect that 20th-century re-creation of Renaissance garden forms.

Villandry lies in the Indre-et-Loire department of the Centre-Val de Loire region, west of the city of Tours in France’s Loire Valley landscape.

• Best time to visit: The gardens are the principal attraction and were substantially redesigned and restored in the early 20th century; they are most showy from late spring through early autumn.

What to See #

• Ornamental and vegetable gardens: Terraced ornamental gardens laid out in formal patterns that include water features, carved parterres and ornamental vegetable beds known as the potager.
• Château interior and state rooms: The château proper with period rooms open to visitors that display interiors and furnishings from later restoration phases.