The house where Leonardo da Vinci lived his final years

Clos Lucé, formerly known as Manoir du Cloux, is a château located in Amboise, France. Built by Hugues d'Amboise in 1471, the palace has known several famous owners, including King Charles VIII, who bought the home from Étienne Le Loup in 1490. During this time, it became known as the ‘summer house’ for French royalty. In 1516, King Francis I gave the château to Leonardo da Vinci when he invited him to live in France. The ageing polymath lived his last years in this house until his death on 2 May 1519.

Thanks to its famous owners, this house today ranks as an ‘historic monument’ and is protected from demolition or reconstruction. After 1855, it became a well-known museum about Leonardo da Vinci's life, work and memory, which was put together and directed by the Saint-Bris family, the current owners of the property. Visitors can walk through the oratory, a Gothic chapel made with chalk stones and decorated with murals painted by Leonardo's disciples, and see a copy of the Mona Lisa painted in 1654 by Ambroisse Dubois.

Clos Lucé is 500 metres from the royal Château d'Amboise, to which it is connected by an underground passageway. Between 1509 and 1515, the castle housed Charles IV, Duke of Alençon and Marguerite de Navarre. Later, Francis I provided Leonardo with a pension of 700 gold ecus, allowing him to live and work in the Clos Lucé, where he was appointed ‘The first painter, engineer and architect of the King’.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons