AMBOISE

town, Indre-et-Loire dpartement, Centre rgion, central France, on both banks of the Loire River, east of Tours. It is the site of a late Gothic chteau (with Renaissance additions), one of a great company of castles in the rich, rolling Loire country. The town was first mentioned in 504 as Ambatia, when on the isle of Saint-Jean (now le d'Or), Clovis, king of the Franks, met Alaric II, king of the Visigoths, to make a short-lived pact. In the 11th century Fulk III Nerra, Count of Anjou, took the town from the count of Blois and built a high, square stone keep, from which the present chteau emerged. Thrusting up from a rock above the river, the chteau has a three-story facade flanked by two enormous squat towers. It was a favourite residence of French monarchs from the mid-15th century to the 17th. Charles VIII, who was born and died there, brought artists from Italy to embellish the place. Huguenot efforts to remove Francis II from the influence of the House of Guise were exposed in 1560 as the Conspiracy of Amboise, and subsequently Protestant corpses hung from the balcony of the king's house, a Gothic portion of the chteau. Nevertheless, the dict d'Amboise (1563) granted freedom of worship to Protestant nobility and gentry. From the time of Henry IV, the chteau was often used as a prison, and Abdelkader, the Algerian national leader, was confined there (184852). In 1872, after private owners had razed portions of the chteau, the National Assembly voted its return to the Orlans family. In the town itself the 16th-century town hall is a museum. The Porte de l'Horloge is a 15th-century gateway with a carillon. To the southeast is Le Clos-Luc, formerly the castle of Cloux, where Leonardo da Vinci died; it is now a museum. Immediately south is the seven-tiered Pagoda of Chanteloup, a piece of 18th-century chinoiserie. Industrial development has extended there from Paris and includes the manufacture of machine tools, chemical products, and shoes. Pop. (1982) 10,823.