\b0 Located on the banks of the Cher, the castle of Chenonceaux was originally a simple manor hous
e built from 1515 onward by the general tax collector for Normandy, Bohier. Acquired by the crown in 1534, it was given by King Henry II to his favorite Diane de Poitiers. She added a bridge spanning the Cher with five arches of admirable elegance. A few
years later, Queen Catherine de' Medici got the architect Philibert Delorme to build a two-story gallery of 60 meters (197 feet) in length on top of this bridge, in a style that foreshadowed the classicism of the following century. The many rooms, chamb
ers, and halls (as well as the chapel) inside the castle still house fine pictures by Jordaens, Andrea del Sarto, Rubens, Zurbarßn, and French painters of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.\par
