Unsterbliche Liebe II

Château de Chenonceau

1589
Catherine de Medici died in Blois on January 5, 1589 at the age of seventy. She bequeathed the castle to Louise of Lorraine, the Queen and the wife of her son Henri III. The extensive transformations undertaken in 1576 were not yet finished: except for the gallery, only one wing of the main courtyard, the building of the Dômes, was completed. Although Louise had married a man who preferred men to her, she was a loving and considerate wife. But that same year, Henri was murdered in Saint-Cloud. Overcome with grief, Louise gave way to melancholy and never recovered. Soon called "the White Queen" by the villagers, she turned Chenonceau into a place of meditation and solitude. Symbolically, she stored all the velvet and satin dresses for the feasts in a large chest in the gallery. After years of light and music, silence and darkness fell upon Chenonceau.