The documented history of Château de Détilly – or Destilly as it was then called – takes us back to the 10thcentury. In 954 – the year the first tower of the Chinon fortress was built – the property was given as a fiefdom by the archbishop of Tours Joseph II to Gombaud, who became lord of Destilly.
One of his successors, knight Robert de Pocé, founded the original chapel in the grounds, dedicated to Our Lady of Pity and Saint Mark, which was consecrated in 1135 by another archbishop of Tours, Hugues de la Ferté.
Towards the end of 11thcentury, the current owner, Hugues de Destilly, gave it to his daughter as her dowry when she married knight Guy de Brizay, lord of Brizay (south-east of Chinon) and Haut-Brizay (north of Poitiers).
The property remained in the de Brizay family for eight generations, until Jean de Brizay sold it in 1446 to his son-in-law Louis de Valori, who was maître d’hôtel of Louis III, Duke of Anjou and King of Naples, and squire of King Charles VII of France (the king whom Joan of Arc recognized in Chinon in 1429).
Louis de Valori, whose grandfather Gabriel Valori-Rustichelli had emigrated from Florence to France in the 1370s, was descended from the oldest branch of the great Italian family Rustichelli.
Louis de Valori paid 5,625 French pounds for Destilly after selling the Château de Marignane in Provence, which had been given to his father by Louis II of Anjou – thus opening the way for over three centuries of de Valori ownership.