Why go
The draw is the gallery commissioned by Paul Ardier, where monarchs appear alongside queens, ministers, soldiers and diplomats. It shows how a 17th-century owner chose to present power and memory, with the painted ceiling and tiled floor making the room as revealing as the portraits.
The full story
Jean du Thiers, a secretary of state to Henry II, developed much of Beauregard in the mid-16th century. Its surviving interiors include decoration from that period, but Paul Ardier gave the château its defining room after buying it in 1617. He commissioned a gallery of 327 portraits spanning the reigns from Philip VI to Louis XIII. Rather than showing French kings alone, the sequence places them among the people who governed, negotiated and fought around them. Figures from outside France broaden that political map. Underfoot, thousands of Delftware tiles cover the gallery floor. Above, blue ceiling decoration commissioned by Ardier's daughter Marie uses costly lapis lazuli pigment. Those details turn the gallery into a deliberate display of learning and wealth. Spend time comparing the people grouped around each reign: the room tells a wider story than a simple line of kings.