“Marlinspike Hall is inspired by the central section of the Château de Cheverny.” Hergé, 1975.
The central section. Two words that say everything, and that we always forget to read. To fit a Grand Siècle house into a comic-strip panel, something had to be taken away. It was the two wings. Cheverny gained Tintin, Snowy, Captain Haddock and Nestor. It lost its name and its pavilions.
Visiting the Château de Cheverny therefore begins with checking what you think you know. And with finding, ten minutes on foot from Le Clos Amarante, a house far larger than the one in the albums.
What Hergé actually did
Nothing documents a visit by the artist to the site. What turned up in his files was a tourist brochure for Cheverny, its cover carrying a pencil sketch of Tintin and Haddock walking towards the façade. That was his method: work from the document, at a distance, simplifying to the bone. The ligne claire is an art of subtraction.
The château appears for the first time in 1942, in The Secret of the Unicorn. It comes back in ten of the twenty-four albums. Its main fireplace is the one in the King’s Bedchamber. As for the name Moulinsart, the French name of Marlinspike Hall, it does not come from here at all but from Sart-Moulin, a hamlet outside Brussels, with its two halves swapped round. Legend travels faster than the archive.
The estate keeps that inheritance alive with a permanent exhibition, The Secrets of Marlinspike Hall, opened in 2001 across seven hundred square metres in the outbuildings. You go down into the underground passages where the young reporter is held prisoner, you cross Professor Calculus’s laboratory and his shark-shaped submarine. One room exists in no album at all: Tintin’s bedroom at the château. Thirty minutes, start to finish. It closes between 12.45pm and 1.45pm, which has caught out more than one visitor in a hurry.
Seventeen rooms, and the finest furniture in the Loire Valley
Cheverny is happy to present itself as the most richly furnished château in the valley. This is not brochure language.
The dining room carries thirty-four painted wooden panels by Jean Mosnier, seventeenth century, telling Don Quixote. The King’s Bedchamber unfolds its tapestries and its period furniture. The Arms Room is the largest in the house, under its beamed French ceiling. You also pass through the private apartments, the nursery, and a chapel finished in the nineteenth century in the Troubadour style. Family portraits, Gobelins tapestries, Italian cabinets, fifteenth-century weapons, clocks, lacquerwork from the East… The same family has held the place for six centuries, which explains why nothing here has the air of a museum.
In 1922, as it happens, it became the first privately owned château in France to open its doors to visitors.
Six gardens, six hundred thousand tulips
The Tulip Garden is the most spectacular: six hundred thousand bulbs planted every year, five hundred thousand of them in a double ribbon two hundred and fifty metres long, in flower in April. The Garden of Love holds six bronze sculptures by the Swede Gudmar Olovson. The Sweet Garden, planted in 2020, is an orchard of one hectare and three hundred and seventy trees. To these are added the vegetable and cutting garden, the Apprentices’ Garden and a laurel maze.
On the way to the vegetable garden you pass the kennels, built in 1850 for the Cheverny hunt. Around a hundred French Tricolour hounds live there. The traditional “soupe des chiens”, the moment when the whole pack waits for the signal before falling on its food, is no longer announced on the château website: better to ask at the ticket office on the day of your visit.
2026 opening times
The estate is open 365 days a year, without a single exception. Not 25 December, not 1 January, not 1 May.
| Period | Ticket office and château |
|---|---|
| 1 January to 31 March | 10.00am to 5.00pm |
| 1 April to 30 June | 9.15am to 6.00pm |
| 1 July to 31 August | 9.15am to 6.30pm |
| 1 to 30 September | 9.15am to 6.00pm |
| 1 October to 31 December | 10.00am to 5.00pm |
The gardens stay open thirty minutes longer, and the estate closes thirty minutes after the ticket office. In December, the Christmas illuminations impose a timetable of their own.
2026 prices
Tickets are bought on site, with no booking.
| Ticket | Adult | Concession | Under 7s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Château and gardens | €15.50 | €11.50 | free |
| Château, gardens and Tintin exhibition | €20.50 | €16.00 | free |
| Château, gardens and grounds by electric boat | €21.00 | €16.50 | €4.00 |
| Full visit | €26.00 | €21.00 | €4.00 |
The concession rate applies to 7 to 14 year olds, secondary school pupils, students under 25, jobseekers and large families. Visitors with a disability enter free. The tickets that include the grounds are offered only from April to 11 November.
Two supplements are worth their five euros: the guided tour of the château, forty-five minutes, and the equestrian show, forty-five minutes as well, at 11am and 3pm every day except Saturday in July and August.
How long it takes
The château on its own takes forty minutes, booklet in hand. Allow two hours to two and a half for the château, the gardens and the Tintin exhibition: that is the right shape for a first visit. Half a day if you add the tour of the grounds by electric buggy and electric boat.
Getting there
Avenue du Château, at the entrance to the village of Cheverny, less than two kilometres from the centre of Cour-Cheverny. Three free car parks, one of them reserved for campervans during the day. Twenty minutes from Blois, an hour from Tours, two hours from Paris on the A10, exit 17. By train, Blois-Chambord station is 1 hour 40 minutes from Paris-Austerlitz, and the Azalys shuttle serves the château for six euros return, but only from April to early November.
From Le Clos Amarante, it is a ten-minute walk. No car, no car park, no journey home to negotiate.
Three pieces of advice
Come at opening time. With no booking, the queue forms on the spot, and the middle of the day is the busiest moment. The château first, the gardens afterwards.
Choose April or September. April for the tulips, September for the mildness and the quiet. From mid-October to mid-November, the estate dresses itself in chrysanthemums and gourds.
Bring good shoes. Two hundred and twenty-five metres from the ticket office to the château, five hundred and fifteen to the departure point for the grounds, and a flight of ten steps with no handrail. Pushchairs are left at the entrance, pets stay outside.
The Orangerie serves lunch from midday to 2.30pm without booking, and works as a tea room from 10.30am to 5pm. Picnics are allowed along the canal.
To walk out of your own front door, push open the gate before the crowd, come home for lunch, go back in the afternoon for the gardens. That is what our house in Cour-Cheverny makes possible, ten minutes from the château that lost its wings…
Information checked on 3 August 2026 on the official Château de Cheverny website. Opening times and prices change: a glance at chateau-cheverny.fr before you set off.
