Candé Castle

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Candé Castle
Candé Castle, large drawing room

Castle Candé is a castle near the town of Monts in the Indre-et-Loire department in France . It is located on an area of ​​250 hectares on the N10 and goes back to a country house that François Briçonnet, Mayor of Tours (1499–1500) had built in the Renaissance style in 1500 instead of an old castle. In 1508 it was completed by his daughter Jeanne Briçonnet. In 1853 the wealthy Cuban Santiago Drake del Castillo bought the property and expanded it to three times its size. Styles were the neo-Gothic and the neo-renaissance .

The last private owner was the billionaire Charles Bedaux (1886-1944), who bought the castle in 1927 and extensively modernized it. This included central heating, hot water on all floors and a central telephone system. For physical training you went to the newly established gymnastics studio or to the golf course. The design of the whole was in the hands of Henri Lafargue, architect from Blois, who added a private bathroom to each living area.

Equipped in this way, the castle was equipped for the major event that took place on June 3, 1937. On this day the Duke of Windsor married the American Wallis Simpson at Candé Castle , for whom he had renounced the English throne. The Duke was Edward VIII King of Great Britain and Northern Ireland for only ten months and abdicated on December 11, 1936.

In 1951, Fern Bedaux, the owner's widow, ceded the Candé Castle to the French Republic. The French state hastened to bring the furniture to Paris in the Mobilier national . At the same time the castle was closed and hunting on the property was also stopped. The restored building, which has been under the control of the Conseil Général d'Indre-et-Loire ( Touraine ) since 1974, has only been open to the public for a few years with the returned original furnishings. Efforts are also being made to establish Candé Castle as a cultural center and event location, for example for exhibitions and weddings.

literature

  • Bernhard Schneidewind: The Loire Castles. The signpost through the garden of France . Ullstein, Frankfurt / M., Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-550-06850-6 , p. 154.

Web links

Commons : Schloss Candé  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 47 ° 17 ′ 49.5 ″  N , 0 ° 39 ′ 53.5 ″  E