The story of this place
The royal city of Loches in the Touraine is crowned by one of the finest surviving Romanesque keeps in Europe, an 11th-century donjon nearly 40 metres tall. Within its royal lodge, in 1429, Joan of Arc pressed a hesitant Charles VII to march to his coronation at Reims. The Logis Royal also holds the tomb of Agnès Sorel, the first officially recognised royal mistress in French history and a favourite of Charles VII, who died young in 1450, possibly poisoned with mercury. The castle's later dungeons were notorious: Louis XI kept prisoners in suspended iron cages, and Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, died here in captivity in 1508 after covering his cell walls with paintings.