The story of this place
Rising in gleaming white tuffeau stone above the Loire, the Château de Saumur was rebuilt around 1400 by Duke Louis I of Anjou and immortalised soon after in the celebrated illuminated manuscript the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, whose 'September' page shows the castle in exquisite detail—turrets, weathervanes and all—above the grape harvest. Over the centuries it served as a fortress, a Protestant academy, a prison for political detainees under Louis XIV and Napoleon, and an arms depot. In June 1940 the young cadets of Saumur's cavalry school, the Cadets de Saumur, made a heroic three-day stand against the advancing Germans along the Loire, a last gesture of defiance in the fall of France.