Villandry Favorites

Favorite thing: This is a fragmentary report. (I have never seen the biography that was written by Alix de Guitaut-Vienne in 2004;ISBN 3-9522154-6-5). Joachim Carvallo was a physician born in Spain in1869. After graduation he came toParis to work with Dr. Charles Richet, professor of Physiology who was working on what today would be called an antiserum to protect against an infectious disease. While Carvallo was there Richet discovered and described the condition "anaphylaxis" a fatal complication of vaccine therapy. For this he received the Nobel prize in 1913. (Retrospectively they often have given the prize for rather unimportant work because of the level of scientific knowledge at the time). Richet spent the rest of his life with other passions such as pacifism and parapsychology. During his stay, Carvallo met an female intern from Lebanon Pa. and married her in 1899. (Having worked in immunology in the early days I probably would have been driven bananas by someone like Richet). For reasons that I do not know the couple bought Villandry in 1906 (they must have been quite rich!) and spent the rest of their lives restoring it. The chateau had been baroqued and Romanticized in the 18 & 19C and that had to be identified , stripped away and restored. The gardens had been obliterated and replaced by wild English Gardens. Carvallo got a copy of Du Cerceau's engravings in his masterpiece of 1580 on great French architecture in which the gardens are "carefully illustrated". This was all he had to go by, but he had many figurative and symbolic influences from his early life in Spain and the pair must have had fertile imaginations and were good scholars. They restored the gardens to its 16C appearance adding their own artistry. Shortly after they began, World War I arrested work. Joachim (who had become a French citizen ) went into the military as a physician and Ann set up a convalescent hospital at Villandry. After the war they went back to finishing the garden. In 1924 Dr. Carvallo founded "La Demeure Historique". This organization has championed federal support (and tax deductions) for those who would preserve France's patrimony. The organization is still hard at work. Many of the chateaux are open to the public (with fine educational day experiences for French school children). Others are elaborate B&B's (100 euro and up). We have stayed in a few of them (some even offer additionally table d'hote dinners) and have written here about the ones we have stayed in along the Loire. The grand-children of Dr. Carvallo are continuing to upgrade Villandry and have added a Maze and a Sun Garden. (I would like to include his picture but I have never seen one).

Fondest memory: www.demeure-historiques.org
www.bienvenueauchateau.com