Amboise · Royal residence above the Loire
Château Royal d’Amboise: tickets, hours and how to get there
A royal Renaissance residence above the Loire, with the Saint-Hubert chapel and Leonardo da Vinci’s tomb. Official prices, HistoPad included, and hours.
Today
Opening hours for every month are on the Opening hours page.
Checked against the official website on October 22, 2026 · Official source
In short
- On the official site the ticket costs 17.30 € for an adult, including the HistoPad, 14.40 € for students and 11 € for children aged 7 to 18. Children under 7 enter free. Prices read on the official site on 22 October 2026.
- Open all year except 1 January and 25 December. The hours given are those of the ticket office, and the site closes 45 minutes later. In the 2026–2027 season there is a lunch break from 12:30 to 14:00, from 4 January to 5 February and from 2 November to 17 December.
- Allow 1.5 to 2 hours. The HistoPad classic circuit lasts 1 hour 30, and the express one 45 minutes.
- Amboise station is 10 minutes on foot from the entrance. Combined tickets with Clos Lucé are sold online only, according to the official site.
The Saint-Hubert chapel and Leonardo’s tomb
The chapel was a private oratory of the kings of France, suspended above the town, with decoration carved in tufa. The official site says Leonardo da Vinci’s tomb is there. Baedeker’s 1899 guide also places the remains of Leonardo in the chapel. We did not check the details of how the remains were identified.
The Tiqets description says the chapel reopened in June 2024 after almost three years of works. We could not verify this on the official site.
The carved doorway
Above the chapel doorway is a relief of the legend of Saint Hubert’s hunt. Francis Miltoun’s 1906 book on the Loire describes it as showing Saint Hubert, Saint Christopher and Saint Anthony, with the Virgin, Charles VIII and Anne of Brittany in the pediment.
Henry James, in 1884, called the sculpture the jewel of Amboise.
Terraces, ramparts and gardens
The terraces and ramparts give a 360-degree view of the Loire, which the official text calls the most beautiful panorama of the valley. James wrote in 1884 that the view from the ramparts was magnificent.
The garden covers a little over 2 hectares. It includes the Naples terrace, the first Italian garden of the kingdom, from the end of the 15th century, and a contemporary garden laid out over Louis-Philippe’s English park, with thousands of boxwood balls. The garden is labelled Jardin Remarquable and is a refuge for birds. The Oriental Garden is closed for works on the south-east bastions, says the official text.
The royal residence and the HistoPad
The residence has three levels and includes the guard rooms, the great council hall, the king’s bedchamber and the Minimes tower. The ground and first floors are devoted to the Renaissance, and the second floor to the 19th century, the time of Louis-Philippe.
The HistoPad tablet is included in the ticket, in 12 languages including English and Italian. There is a café in July and August, and a shop in the former stables.
