www.chinon-valdeloire.com. Stretched along the banks of the River Vienne, Chinon clusters beneath the walls of its ruined medieval fortress where Joan of Arc met the dauphin Charles VII in 1429, and set about regaining France for the French. Built on a strategic fortified site, Château de Chinon comes in three parts: Henry Plantagenet’s Fort Saint-Georges; the 12th-14thC Château de Milieu where the Logis Royal houses waxworks and museum pieces; and the Fort de Coudray on a rocky spur.

Vieux Chinon offers a pleasing collection of gabled Renaissance houses and 17thC mansions. East of the town centre, a small museum by the tumble-down Chapelle de Sainte-Ragonde provides an insight into the cave-dwelling occupants of the maisons troglodytiques, dwellings hollowed out of the soft chalk.

Chinon is also a wine town with a rather down-market wine museum, where Automatons spout quotations from Rabelais, the 16thC humanist born in nearby Devinière (6 km SW on the D117). His birthplace has been transformed into a museum. Chinon also undergoes a transformation when the old town hosts the annual fancy dress Marché Médieval in early August.