Most visited Châteaux in France
France > Highlights > Chateaux
By millions of visitors per year, the most popular castles in France are (most popular first): Château de Versailles
 With over 2.5 millions visitors a year and its easy access from Paris, Versailles is the most popular castle in France. And rightly so, as you can come again and again and everytime visit new areas of this huge castle designed to house courtiers and impress on visitors the greatness of the King of France.
Château de Chenonceau
 With Chambord, this is the most popular of all castles of the Loire (over 850,000 visitors a year). Spectacularly located over a river, you can tour the château in a boat and go below the arches. This makes for a memorable trip! Chenonceau can get unconfortably crowded in the summer so make sure you come early.
Château de Chambord
 Amazing 440-rooms castle used as a "hunting lodge" by Francois I and set in Europe's largest gaming reserve. This most impressive castle deserves a visit if you can put up with the crowds of tourists that come in the summer.
Château du Haut-Koenigsbourg
 Biggest and most popular castle in Alsace built like an eagle's nest. Fantastic views.
Château de Blois
The Château at BLOIS, the handsome former seat of the dukes of Orléans, is one of the most stately and historic of them all. Its great facade rises above the modern town like a great Italianate cliff, with the dramatic esplanade and courtyard behind and the rooms within steeped in, sometimes bloody, history.
Château d'Amboise
 Not as spectacular as Chambort, and disappointingly empty, Amboise is nevertheless worth a visit for the exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci's inventions, who stayed in Chambord for a long time.
Château de Cheverny
 Perfect example of a seventeenth-century Château, Cheverny presents an immaculate picture of symmetry, harmony and the aristocratic good life – descendants of the first owners still own, live in and go hunting from Cheverny today.
Château de Villandry
Even if gardens aren't your thing, those at the Château de Villandry are definitely worth a visit. The Château itself is the epitome of elegance, concealing eighteenth-century interiors behind its graceful Renaissance facades. The turret-top view over the gardens and out to the confluence of the Loire and Cher is unmissable.
Château de Fontainebleau
 This chateau just outside Paris, owes its existence to its situation in the middle of a magnificent forest, which made it the perfect base for royal hunting expeditions. First built by François I, it continued to enjoy royal favour well into the nineteenth century; Napoléon spent huge amounts of money on it, as did Louis-Philippe. The gardens are equally luscious.
Château d'Azay-le-Rideau
 On its little island in the Indre, the Château is one of the loveliest in the Loire: perfect turreted early Renaissance, pure in style right down to the blood-red paint of its window frames.
Château des Baux de Provence
 The fortified village of LES BAUX-DE-PROVENCE is mostly visited for its ruined eleventh-century Citadel of the Dead City on top of the hill.
Château de Carcassonne
 Everybody comes to Carcassone for the Cité, the double-walled and turreted fortress that crowns the hill above the River Aude - the epitome of the fairy-tale medieval town.
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