The Lions Gate: Royal Chateau Amboise

Lions Gate, Château Royal d'Amboise

Did the Château really have lions? Hard to take in, but, yes. You do wonder how they got here and how they were they fed along the way. The danger to life and limb alone beggars belief.

They were taken through what became known as The Lions Gate. Formerly known as La Porte des Champs (it was surrounded by fields) and the Postern Gate it was at one time the only access to the Château. Posterns were often concealed to enable people to come and go without being seen.

Built in the 1300s, rebuilt by Louis XI around 1469 and again in the early 1600s, by 1700 the Gate was in ruins. Thanks to successive restorations, it is in excellent condition.

Access to The Lions Gate involved (still involves) a trek from town along the ‘path’ to Clos-Lucé (rue Victor Hugo) up to le plateau de Châteliers before entering the grounds via La Porte des Lions. The Amboise accounts for 1482 list the costs of repair of the ‘path leading from the postern of the chastel of Amboise’.

When lions arrived, the Postern Gate became The Lions Gate (La Porte des Lions).

The first mention of lions in the Château comes from the reign of Charles VIII. In 1494, his wife, Anne of Brittany, bought a donkey to amuse the lions so the name change to Lions Gate must have happened before 1498 when Charles died in a fatal accident. One would have thought the donkey was bought to feed the lions not to amuse them. Historians say they were fed cats, dogs and sheep.

Charles cleared the moats around the Château for a menagerie for exotic animals kept at Court for entertainment. Lions, cheetahs, parrots, monkeys and hawks populated the castle. Sources say the moats were dug out by the Romans when they occupied the fortified site.

Charles and Anne were fascinated by exotic animals and birds. As a child, Anne loved her father’s menagerie (ménage–to manage) in Brittany. At Amboise she kept a white robin, a white ermine (her emblem was an ermine tail), a white peacock and, according to some sources, a white groundhog. She liked to attend shows of wild animals.

Her songbirds wore tiny silver bells.

The couple were very fond of parrots. Charles had a perch in his bedroom. When Piero de Médici sent him falcons, the royal family enjoyed watching them hunt.

Among the Italians brought back by Charles to Amboise was Géronimo who took care of the birds. Another, Lucas Vigeno built ovens in the Minimes Tower to hatch bird eggs, the first time incubators were seen in Amboise.

When Charles’ father, Louis XI, inherited the Château, he wanted a private access so built the Garçonnet tower. It had and still has, a small door opening onto rue de la Concorde (once rue Blésienne). He used red bricks for his tower. They were easier and quicker to use for spiral steps – called screws – than laboriously dressing stone. There were many brickyards around Amboise.

When it was finished in 1468, the Garçonnet Tower was two levels higher than it is today. They were demolished sometime before 1620 after which it was called the ‘razed’ tower.

Louis had elk and reindeer sent from Denmark to repopulate the Loire valley forests for hunting. Sources say he kept an elephant and a lioness at Court but this may have been in Plessis-les-Tours.

His mother, Marie of Anjou, was an animal lover as was her brother René of Anjou. As a child her menagerie included greyhounds, hedgehogs, starlings, bustards, parrots, goats, stags, does, hens, a rooster and chicks. It even had a porpoise.

Louis XII hunted with cheetahs and leopards given to him by the Duke of Milan.

François I received a lion from Suleiman the Magnificent. It was shipped from Algiers. He received a bear and ostriches from Barbarossa and seals from Marie of Hungary. He also had a tame heron, monkeys and the first live cassowary seen in Europe. His lion keeper, Jean Anthoine, bought a bull to fight the lions, as done in ancient Rome.

One presumes the lions departed along with the royal family when it abandoned Château Amboise after the horror of the massacre of Huguenots in 1560.

There is a copy or replica of The Lions Gate in Rhodes.

The Amboise Gate, Rhodes

The Amboise Gate was built in 1512 by Emery d' Amboise, Grand Master of the Knights Hospitallers. It was fortified with two massive round towers to protect Rhodes from the Ottomans.

Emery d'Amboise was born in 1434 in Château Chaumont, the family home. His brother Georges, Cardinal d'Amboise, was prime minister of Louis XII.

He called it the Amboise Gate either to acknowledge he copied the one in Château Amboise or he was feeling nostalgic or, most probably, the name of his Gate paid homage to the Amboise family which was deprived of Château Amboise by Charles VII who took it in 1431 for the Crown. It had been in his family for four hundred years.

Post by Pamela, photography by Mark.