Château de Montsoreau

The Château de Montsoreau is a Flamboyant Gothic castle in the Loire Valley, directly built in the Loire riverbed. It is located in the market town of Montsoreau, in the Maine-et-Loire département of France, close to Saumur, Chinon, Fontevraud-l'Abbaye, and Candes-Saint-Martin. The Château de Montsoreau is situated at the confluence of two rivers, the Loire and the Vienne, and the meeting point of three historical regions: Anjou, Poitou, and Touraine. It is the only château of the Loire Valley built directly in the Loire riverbed.

A Gallo-Roman origin has been verified for the settlement of Montsoreau but not confirmed for the castle, even though a fluted column made of stone from a Gallo-Roman temple or a public building was found in the moat during the restoration works of the end of the 20th century. The first written sources are from the 6th century with the domain of Restis, but it was only with the construction of a fortress at the end of the 10th century that the market town began to become prosperous. One part of this first castle was found during the same restoration works by the archaeologists. The castle was reconstructed in a Flamboyant Gothic style between 1450 and 1460 by Jean de Chambes, one of the kingdom's wealthiest men, a senior councillor and chamberlain to King Charles VII and King Louis XI.

The Château de Montsoreau was written about by Alexandre Dumas in his novel La Dame de Monsoreau (1845–1846). This novel is the second part of a trilogy on the Renaissance between La Reine Margot and The Forty-Five Guardsmen.

Parts of the Château de Montsoreau were listed as a monument historique by the French Ministry of Culture in 1862, 1930, and 1938. The Loire Valley between Sully-sur-Loire and Chalonnes has been inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 30 November 2000.

In 2015, the French contemporary art collector Philippe Méaille signed with Christian Gillet, president of the French department of the Maine-et-Loire an emphyteutic lease of 25 years of the real property of the Château de Montsoreau. The Château houses Méaille's collection of the conceptual art collective Art & Language as a museum named Château de Montsoreau-Museum of Contemporary Art.