It is not too fanciful to say that the world owes a huge debt of gratitude to Francis I, King of France for Leonardo's Notebooks, or at least some of them.

Francesco Melzi was an Italian aristocrat. His family took the name from their home town, Melzo near Milan (Francesco has a street named after him).

John Evelyn visited Amboise in 1644.

Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu better known as Cardinal Richelieu, was Louis XIII ’s right hand man for the eighteen years prior to the Cardinal’s death. He was sixteen years older than the King.

You can visit the house where Max Ernst lived in Huismes and Sandy Calder’s Studio in Saché. Both villages about an hour’s drive from Amboise.

Francis I, King of France, hated Charles V of Austria, The Holy Roman Emperor, with every fibre of his being. He hated him even more after 1525 following the disastrous (for Francis) Battle of Pavia when a crowing Charles locked Francis in prison.

It’s a year now since French chanteuse Denise Le Brun took her final curtain and joined her friends, Edith Piaf, Jacques Brel and Marcel Marceau in Showbiz Heaven.

Leonardo da Vinci and Renaissance perfume.