Royal fortress of Chinon

It is a landmark Middle Ages place. In the 12th century, when Henry II Plantagenêt was at the head of an empire stretching from Scotland to the Pyrenees, he made Chinon one of his most important capitals. He is buried in the nearby Abbey of Fontevraud, which his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine had made the royal necropolis.

Later, during the Hundred Years War, it was here that Joan of Arc came and met Charles VII for the first time and that the reconquest against the English began.