REPORTAGE
While deconfinement began in France on May 11, tourism is gradually resuming in the country. Friday, the most famous of the Loire castles, the Château de Chambord, in the Loir-et-Cher, reopens its doors to visitors. In 2019, more than a million people visited this emblematic monument. And to adapt to the sanitary measures put in place to fight against the epidemic of coronavirus, the whole organization of visits to this 16th century castle had to be rethought, as Europe 1 saw on Thursday.
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The change can be seen from the entrance to the castle. In the huge room, the purple tapestries rub shoulders with the stickers on the mask. But in Chambord, some corridors are quite narrow. Alain must therefore install signage to indicate to visitors the direction of traffic to be respected. "We invite people to come in here," said the site employee, pointing to the arrow on the ground. "It was difficult to organize crossings in places that were a bit cramped," he says.
The challenge was to adopt the distancing measures while retaining "a historical sense of the visit circuit" so as "not to go from the 19th to the 16th century", continues Alain, otherwise "people don't really understand anymore meaning of it all. "
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Leonardo da Vinci's staircase, perfect for social distancing
The tour of the rooms continues. Under the sumptuous paintings, there are distributors of hydroalcoholic gel. In all, it will have taken a month to rethink the whole route, from the parking lot to the ticket office. But a few hours before the reopening to the public, the domain director, Jean d'Haussonville, remains confident. "It is a very large place, very airy, with lots of gardens," he notes.
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"We know the behavior of the public, where it gets lost, where it ends up," added the director. "It's probably easier than managing the flow of the public at an airport or a station," said Jean d'Haussonville. The other advantage of the Château de Chambord for managing the public is its grand staircase imagined by Leonardo da Vinci. This double structure thus allows visitors to go up and down by two different passages without crossing. Ideal for compliance with barrier measures.