Charles VII resided in Chinon, which remained the seat of the court until 1450, and he and his dauphin, the future Louis XI, ordered or authorized construction works to be carried out.
Between 1465 and 1469, Louis XI ordered the construction of the Château de Langeais at the end of the promontory, a hundred meters in front of the 10th century dungeon.
It was built on the site of the ancient fortress of Foulques Nerra, unusually, directly on the Loire river bank in the style of Venetian Renaissance.
[6] In 1491, before the Italian campaign, Charles VIII had begun rebuilding the Château d'Amboise, turning it from a medieval castle into a more comfortable residence, with two wings and a chapel.
The landscape architect whom Charles brought from Italy, Pacello da Mercogliano, created the first French Renaissance garden on the terrace, surrounded by a forged wrought iron fence.
He acquired a fountain, marble medallions from Genoa, sculpted frontons and pilasters with seashell ornamentation, and various architectural elements from Italy and used them in the chậteau.
[8] The Château de Bury, another medieval castle (since demolished), was constructed beginning in 1511 by Florimond Robertet, a state secretary and treasurer for both Charles VIII and François I.
The Château d'Azay-le-Rideau (1518–1527) was constructed on an island in the Ile River by Gilles Berthelot, a wealthy banker from Tours, who was president of the Chamber of Accounts, Receiver-General of Finances, and Treasurer of France.
Towers bulge from the corners of the château, bound by a horizontal plat band between the two floors and broad cornice elevating the attic storey; a high roof is pierced by lucarnes, or dormer windows, framed by decorative pilasters and capped with ornate pediments (which became the most recognizable feature of French Renaissance architecture) and topped with rounded, rectangular chimneys.
The initial design was more medieval than Renaissance; only the pillars and decorated capitals of the columns on the courtyard, and the sculpture in light relief, showed the Italian influence.
The 12th-century tower was preserved, and a new residential block was constructed, its facade ornamented with pilasters and high windows with lucarnes and with triangular frontons, which became a signature feature of the new style.
The old medieval chatelet, or gatehouse, was replaced by a new structure, the Porte Dorée, which was composed of grand loggias one above the other, modeled after the palaces of Naples and Urbino.
[17] The second phase was new courtyard, the Cheval Blanc, with three long wings constructed of brick and moellons et enduit, a mixture of rubble and cement, which became a common combination in French Renassiance architecture.
[18][17] Beginning in 1530, the group of Italian artists imported by François I, led by Rosso Fiorentino, Francesco Primaticcio, and Niccolo dell' Abbate, becoming known as the First School of Fontainebleau, decorated the interiors of the new rooms.
The facade was entirely redone and, unlike the earlier châteaux, it was given an Italianate flat terrace roof lined with large stone vases with an emerging caved flame.
These included the caryatide, elaborate cartouches, renommées, relief statues representing Fame, over doorways, grotesques, often in the form of satyrs and griffons, and sculpted draperies and garlands.
It originally had three wings, a chapel and a large garden, as well as an imposing gatehouse, whose centerpiece was the famous Nymph statue by Cellini, now at Fontainebleau, along with sculptures of a stag and two hunting dogs.
[21] One of the last commissions of François I, given just a year before his death, was the reconstruction of a part of the Louvre Palace, built by Charles V, in order to make it more comfortable and palatial.
The project was undertaken by Pierre Lescot, a nobleman and architect, and was modified by the new King, Henry II, who added a new pavilion on the southwest to serve as his residence.
The facade featured arcades on the ground level in the Italian style, and was divided by three avant-corps decorated with sets of twin Corinthian columns and topped with consoles with rounded frontons.
These vertical elements were balanced by the strong horizontal bands marking the floors, and by the gradual and subtle change of the ornament on each level, representing the three classical orders of architecture.
However, on the attic or top floor, he lavishly covered every part of the wall with sculptures of slaves, warriors, trophies, and mythical divinities, representing in classical style the military triumphs of France.
[27] The hôtel d'Assézat in Toulouse, built by architect Nicolas Bachelier and, after his death in 1556, by his son Dominique, is an outstanding example of Renaissance palace architecture of southern France, with an elaborate decoration of the cour d'honneur ("courtyard") influenced by Italian Mannerism and by classicism.
The designs of the façades, featuring twin columns which develop regularly over three floors (Doric, Ionic, Corinthian), take their inspiration from the great classical models such as the Coliseum.
Much polychrome interplay (brick/stone) and various ornaments (cabochons, diamonds, masks) evoke luxury, surprise and abundance, themes peculiar to Mannerist architecture.
[28] The Renaissance had less influence on French religious architecture; cathedrals and churches, for the most part, continued to be built or rebuilt in the Flamboyant Gothic style.
[29] One of the finest religious monuments of the French Renaissance is the tomb of François I and his wife Claude de France, located within the Basilica of Saint Denis (1547–1561).
[30] After the death of King Henry II, France was torn by the outbreak of the French Wars of Religion, which largely pushed aside architecture and design.
It featured a central pavilion with low wings composed of arcades topped by a residential floor with alternating dormer windows under triangular frontons.
Its symmetry, corner pavilions, twin pilasters, discreet roof, absence of lucarnes and its rotunda at the entrance made it a concise summary of the French Renaissance style at the end of the 16th century.