page_title: Gardens of the French Renaissance
section_title: The Gardens of the Château d'Amboise, Blois,  Gaillon and Bury
hierarchical_section_title: Gardens of the French Renaissance / History / The Gardens of the Château d'Amboise, Blois,  Gaillon and Bury
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Ansicht des Schlosses Blois, Loir-et-Cher, auf einem Stich des 16. Jahrhunderts English: Le Château de Blois in Loir-et-Cher, engraving, 16th century
context_page_description: The Gardens of the French Renaissance is a garden style, initially inspired by the Italian Renaissance garden, which evolved later into the grander and more formal jardin à la française during the reign of Louis XIV, by the middle of the 17th century.
  In 1495, King Charles VIII and his nobles brought the Renaissance style back to France after their war campaign in Italy. They reached their peak in the gardens of the royal Château de Fontainebleau, Château d'Amboise, Château de Blois, and Château de Chenonceau.
  French Renaissance gardens were characterized by symmetrical and geometric planting beds or parterres, plants in pots, paths of gravel and sand, terraces, stairways and ramps, moving water in the form of canals, cascades and monumental fountains, and extensive use of artificial grottoes, labyrinths, and statues of mythological figures. They became an extension of the châteaux that they surrounded, and were designed to illustrate the Renaissance ideals of measure and proportion, and to remind viewers of the virtues of Ancient Rome.
context_section_description: At the beginning of the 16th century, King Francis I, who had also visited Italy and had met Leonardo da Vinci, built gardens in the new style on three terraces of different levels bordered by the old walls of his Château de Blois.  Besides the parterres of flowers, the gardens produced a wide variety of vegetables and fruits, including orange and lemon trees in boxes, which were taken indoors in winter.  The building that sheltered them, still standing,  was the first orangerie in France.  The gardens were on the site of the present-day Place Victor-Hugo and the site of the railways station. The last vestiges of the garden were destroyed in 1890 by the construction of the Avenue Victor-Hugo.
  At about the same time, Pacello da Mercogliano designed gardens for the Château de Gaillon owned by Cardinal Georges d'Amboise, a Minister of King Henry IV, who had also spent time in Italy.  The gardens, built on different levels below the old medieval château, were planted in parterres of flowers and fruit trees. The parterre at the entrance of the garden featured the coat of arms of France in flowers.  Bushes were trimmed into the shapes of men on horseback, ships, and birds.  It was also decorated with imposing fountains of marble.
  The gardens of the Château de Bury were built between 1511 and 1524 by Florimont Robertet, a Secretary of State for both Louis XII and Francis I. Robertet had visited the Villa Medici in Fiesole and wanted to reproduce the terraced gardens he saw there. The château, departing from the traditional design, was integrated closely with its gardens.  Visitors passed through a square garden inside the castle and out into two geometric gardens behind the château, decorated with fountains and surrounded by a wooden gallery. The axis went from the entrance to the chapel, at the far end of the garden.  Like Italian Renaissance gardens, the gardens of Bury were located on the edge of a hill, with a fine view of the forest of Blois. In the centre of the court of the château, Robertet placed a bronze copy of Michelangelo's David, which had been given to him by the Republic of Florence.
caption: Gardens of the Château de Blois, about 1570.
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