Blois

Places researched in this city

A selection of the 27 places we've researched in this city. The full set is in the Parroo app.

• Royal château
• Gothic cathedral
• Renaissance bridges
• Magic museum
• Contemporary art
• Timber-framed houses

• Royal Castle of Blois

  In 1588, King Henry III had the powerful Duke of Guise lured into this very château and assassinated in the royal bedchamber, an act that shocked all of Europe. The castle is a rare architectural textbook in one place, with Gothic, Flamboyant Gothic, Renaissance, and Classical wings each built by a different monarch.

• Château de Chambord

  The double-helix staircase at the centre of Chambord is designed so two people can ascend and descend at the same time without ever meeting, a feat of geometry that has been linked to Leonardo da Vinci. Francis I commissioned this 440-room hunting lodge in 1519 as a statement of Renaissance ambition, and its roofline of over 300 chimneys is unlike anything else in France.

• Château de Cheverny

  Cheverny has been open to the public since 1914 and is one of the few Loire châteaux still lived in by the family who built it, the Huraults, whose ancestors constructed it between 1624 and 1634. Comic-book readers will recognise the façade immediately: it served as the model for Moulinsart castle in Hergé's Tintin series.

• Saint-Louis Cathedral of Blois

  A hurricane on the night of 6 to 7 June 1678 destroyed the previous church so completely that the entire building had to be rebuilt from scratch, finished in Late Gothic style by 1702. The interior received a striking 20th-century update with contemporary stained glass by Dutch artist Jan Dibbets, creating an unusual conversation between centuries.

• Jacques-Gabriel Bridge

  The medieval bridge this one replaced collapsed in a single night during an ice breakup in February 1716, destroying thirteen of its arches at once. Its replacement, completed in 1724 by the same architect who later worked for Louis XV, spans 283 metres with a distinctive humpback profile and a central obelisk rising 14.6 metres above the Loire.

• House of Magic Robert-Houdin

  Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, born in Blois in 1805, is considered the father of modern stage magic and the man whose name Harry Houdini borrowed for his own. The museum opposite the royal castle was created partly from a collection donated by Robert-Houdin's own grandson, and six mechanical golden dragon heads emerge from the façade on the hour.

• House of the Acrobat

  Built around 1470 and recorded in 1484 as a student lodging house, this timber-framed building earned its name from the carved wooden acrobats that tumble across its façade, a rare survival of medieval secular sculpture in a city that lost much of its old town to wartime bombing. It stands directly opposite the cathedral, making the contrast between sacred stone and playful wood particularly vivid.