2 Best Sights in The Loire Valley, France

After touring Château de Cheverny, relax at this graceful family-owned Renaissance castle, where you can visit the impressive interiors and get a primer in French history at the newly restored 17th-century portrait gallery—unique in Europe—where every famous European between 1328 and 1643 takes your measure from on high. You'll spot François I, who made the Loire Valley de rigueur in the 16th century (and used Beauregard as a hunting lodge), Joan of Arc, and a host of powerful queens. (A tongue-in-cheek contemporary exhibit pairs portraits of winsome pooches owned by notable Parisians.) Picnicking in the lovely 170-acre park is a must. Its scenic pond and 100 acres of gardens, wild and manicured, merit a leisurely afternoon of strolling and lounging.

Perhaps best remembered as Capitaine Haddock's mansion in the Tintin comic books, the Château de Cheverny is also iconic for its restrained 17th-century elegance. One of the last in the area to be erected, it was finished in 1634, at a time when the rich and famous had mostly stopped building in the Loire Valley. By then, the taste for quaintly shaped châteaux had given way to disciplined Classicism; so here a white, elegantly proportioned, horizontally coursed, single-block facade greets you across manicured lawns. To emphasize the strict symmetry of the plan, a ruler-straight drive leads to the front entrance. The Louis XIII interior with its stridently painted and gilded rooms, splendid furniture, and rich tapestries depicting the Labors of Hercules is one of the few still intact in the Loire region. Despite the priceless Delft vases and Persian embroideries, it feels lived in. That's because it's one of the rare Loire Valley houses still occupied by a noble family. You can visit a small Tintin exhibition called Le Secret de Moulinsart (admission extra), and are free to contemplate the antlers of 2,000 stags in the Trophy Room: hunting, called "venery" in the leaflets, continues vigorously here, with red coats, bugles, and all. In the château's kennels, hordes of hungry hounds lounge around dreaming of their next kill. Feeding times—la soupe aux chiens—are posted on a notice board (usually 11:30 am), and you are welcome to watch the "ceremony" (delicate sensibilities, beware: the dogs line up like statues and are called, one by one, to wolf down their meal from the trainer).