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The Château's encounters with famous people from the 17th to the 19th century

Illustrious hosts

Le Siège de la Cour Royale aux XVe. et XVIe. siècles

Beginning with François I's reign, while the court generally stayed at Fontainebleau and the Louvre, the sovereign still appreciated Amboise, up to Henri II. The monarch's stays were more rare from Henri III's reign. The Court left the Touraine region definitively for Ile-de-France under Henri IV. From that time onwards, the Château d'Amboise was only a simple staging post for the Bourbon Kings. The residence welcomed Louis XIII and Louis XIV several times. His grandson, Philippe, Duke of Anjou, also stayed here on the way to Spain from the II to 13 December 1700 before acceding to the throne of Spain under the name of Philippe V .

Nicolas Fouquet , the disgraced former superintendent of finance, was the involuntary guest of the Château of Amboise. After giving a sumptuous feast in honour of the King of France in his château of Vaux-Ie-Vicomte, he was arrested on 5 September 1661 at Nantes by the captain of the musketeers, the famous d'Artagnan. On his way to the Fort of Pignerol (in the Savoy Alps) where he died on 23 March 1680, he was interned at Amboise from 4 to 16 December 1661. Tradition holds that he was put in the cell situated "above the entrance door of the château". His passage to Amboise became the subject of a pilgrimmage for Jean de La Fontaine, his friend, who came to the château in August 1663.