Château de Châteaudun
1st Château of the Loire

Château de Châteaudun
The residence of a loyal companion in arms of Joan of Arc.

Jean de Dunois, known as the “bastard of Orléans,” half-brother of Duke Charles of Orléans, transformed the former medieval castle into a comfortable and bright residence, adding a Sainte-Chapelle to it. His grandson, François II of Orléans-Longueville, enlarged the castle with a wing adorned in the Renaissance style, anticipating the grand châteaux of the Loire Valley. The construction began around 1450 and was completed around 1520.

The Château de Châteaudun, located in the southern part of the Eure-et-Loir department, is often referred to as “the first of the Loire castles” for visitors coming from Paris.

Of impressive size, this castle offersa rare succession of medieval, Gothic, and Renaissance architectural elements of exceptional authenticity.

Its construction, carried out from the 12th to the 16th century, makes it a true open-air book of history and architecture. Located at the border of Beauce and Orléanais, Châteaudun, a rocky spur overlooking the Loir Valley, was an ideal site for a stronghold. Therefore, at the end of the 12th century, Thibaud V, Count of Blois and descendant of the famous Thibaud the Cheater, built a “large tower” there. This 31-meter-high keep, the last vestige of the medieval castle, is certainly one of the most grandiose and best-preserved in France.

Nearly two centuries later, the Château de Châteaudun became the property of Jean d’Orléans, the favorite companion of Joan of Arc. Between 1450 and 1468, he built the “Dunois” wing. This residential building has two floors topped by a spacious attic, and its layout reflects the need for comfort following the Hundred Years’ War. The kitchens, with their ribbed vaults falling on large fireplaces, reveal the importance that gastronomy had for a 15th-century prince. The bathing apartment and the suspended garden demonstrate the culmination of a “hedonistic” way of life, combining the pleasures of bathing and the pleasures of the senses. He also built a Gothic Sainte-Chapelle adjoining the keep. Designed to house relics of the Passion of Christ, this Sainte-Chapelle is a graceful creation adorned with fifteen polychrome statues of saints and a mural painting of the Last Judgment.

Dunois’ descendants, his son, and his grandson, the first Duke of Longueville, completed the work in the 16th century by constructing a second wing facing the Loir, called the “de Longueville” wing, where the first signs of the Renaissance appeared. This wing houses large ceremonial halls and the apartments of the Orléans-Longueville family, adorned with a collection of tapestries from workshops in Amiens, Paris, and Brussels.

The deep originality of the Château de Châteaudun lies in the gradual transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance while perfectly blending the two styles.

The courtyard of the castle, located between the “Dunois Wing” and the “Longueville Wing,” has preserved two loggia staircases, one with flamboyant decor and the other, inspired by the same pattern, from the Renaissance period.

Long abandoned, saved from ruin thanks to its acquisition by the State, and restored on the eve of the last World War by Jean Trouvelot, the Château de Châteaudun remains today one of the most prestigious witnesses of eight centuries of history.

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