Amboise has spent five centuries being looked at. The Royal Château sits above the town on its limestone bluff; Leonardo da Vinci spent his last years down the road at Clos Lucé and is buried in the château chapel.
What the town has not had, until now, is a hotel of the same ambition as its own scenery.
Relais d’Amboise opens in late September, and it arrives by amalgamation. Two of the town’s best-known properties – Le Choiseul and Le Manoir des Minimes – have been knitted together into a single estate strung along Quai Charles Guinot on the bank of the Loire, directly beneath the château. It is the most significant hotel opening the Loire Valley has seen in years, and it comes from Frédéric Jousset, the entrepreneur and philanthropist behind Relais de Chambord, working through Artnova, his impact fund for cultural heritage. Marugal Hotel Management takes the keys.
The estate is a genuinely odd assemblage, in the best sense: former noble residences, restored gardens and terraces, riverside viewpoints, and troglodyte caves cut into the tuffeau cliffs behind. Architecture and the main public rooms- including the Le Choiseul restaurant and Le Turner rooftop bar – are by LBBA. Interiors throughout are the work of Fabien Roque and Roque Intérieurs, with artistic direction from Joséphine Fossey, who has aimed for a conversation between the old stone and contemporary craft: natural materials, soft colours, artisanal detail, nothing shouting.
There are 63 rooms and suites, scattered across the estate’s various historic buildings rather than stacked in one block. Some face the Loire and fill with river light; others frame the château and the Renaissance rooftops. A number open onto private terraces or gardens. Four suites are carved directly into the rock.
So is the spa. Rather than build a wellness box, the team has taken the ancient troglodyte galleries and turned them into a cool, quiet underground sanctuary, leaving the raw texture of the cave walls where they were. Above ground there is a heated outdoor pool, sauna, cold bath, sensory shower, steam room and a yoga platform looking out over the river.
The caves do more than hold the spa. Les Greniers de César, the estate’s restored galleries, will run as a cultural programme: the main gallery for exhibitions, artistic collaborations, private dinners and events through the year; a second as an interactive leisure space; a third as a tasting cellar for Loire winemakers. To mark the opening, the artist Bernar Venet has been given carte blanche for a site-specific exhibition, staged in partnership with the Château du Clos Lucé and the Royal Château of Amboise, a gesture that places the hotel inside the town’s cultural life rather than beside it.
Getting there is easy in a way the Loire is not always given credit for: direct trains from Paris in under two hours, and Tours about twenty minutes down the line.
The Loire Valley has never been short of châteaux. What it has lacked is somewhere to stay that treats the history as material rather than backdrop. Relais d’Amboise, caves and all, looks like an answer.
