Loire Valley
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Loire Valley (Template:Lang-fr) is known as the Garden of France and the Cradle of the French Language. It is also noteworthy for the quality of its architectural heritage, in its historic towns such as Amboise, Angers, Blois, Chinon, Nantes, Orléans, Saumur, and Tours, but in particular for its world-famous castles, such as the Châteaux d'Amboise, Château de Chambord, Château de Villandry and Chenonceau and more particularly its many cultural monuments, which illustrate to an exceptional degree the ideals of the Renaissance and the Age of the Enlightenment on western European thought and design. The Loire Valley is an outstanding cultural landscape of great beauty, containing historic towns and villages, great architectural monuments, its many châteaux, and fine wines.