Montsoreau
In 1450, Jean II de Chambes, First councelor of Charles VII and ambassador in Venice, bought the fortress of Fulk III to his brother in law and destroyed it in order to build a residential palace on the top of the rock of Montsoreau (the mount Soreau). In an unprecedented move, he built the Château de Montsoreau in a residential style following Italian architecture of the time which makes it the first Renaissance building in France. The Château de Montsoreau was directly on the river bank and still today, it remains the only château of the Loire Valley to have been built in the river bed of the Loire.