Château de Chenonceau, France

Chenonceau lit up at night, its long gallery striding across the River Cher on stone arches, with the turreted main house on the right doubled in the water. A château that crosses a river is a storybook idea in itself, and this is the one everyone pictures. Its legend is a royal rivalry. Henry II gave Chenonceau to his mistress, Diane de Poitiers, who had a bridge built over the Cher. After the king's death in 1559, his widow, Catherine de' Medici, made Diane hand it over, and in 1576 the two-story gallery was completed on top of Diane's bridge. Inside, the gallery's black-and-white checkerboard floor carries you over the water. The women who shaped the house earned it its nickname, the Château des Dames.