• Tagged art, castle, Château de Villandry, decorative garden, environment, Fickle Love Garden, France, French gardens, garden, gardens built for love, holiday, Loire Valley, love, nature, Passionate Love Garden, places, Tender Love Garden, The Love Garden, Tragic Love Garden, travel, tribute, UNESCO World Heritage Site

While researching castles built for love, we stumbled upon another castle located in Villandry, France. But it was the magnificent gardens that were built for love — and even the French name jardin de l’amour sounds divinely romantic. While these gardens have serene elements like Chinese gardens, the Château de Villandry gardens have been called the most romantic and beautiful gardens in France. There is a love story behind Love Garden and the entire estate was designed with romantic symbolism from the Renaissance era. The Villandry has three garden styles, a formal water garden, a 2-part ornamental garden with topiary hedges ripe with symbolism for love including for the “Garden of Love” and the “Garden of Music,” and a huge decorative kitchen garden (potager). The gardens of Château de Villandry are an UNESCO World Heritage Site. We’d never seen anything like it. Welcome to the most romantic gardens in Loire Valley, France! [40 Photos]

• Tagged architecture, architecture for love, art, castles, castles built for love, castles love built, haunted, holiday, love, odd, places, travel, Valentine's Day

Love is the most powerful force that exists. In the throes of love, your feet are nowhere close to the ground but floating in the clouds. Love has inspired all types of art, poems, novels, plays, music and paintings. After Cupid shoots an arrow through the heart, some people are so inspired as to erect architecture. We’re not talking about building a Love Shack, but of big-scale and divinely romantic architecture such as castles built for love. Margaret Anderson once said, “In real love you want the other person’s good. In romantic love you want the other person.” Castles built by love seem like both. There are many examples of architecture built for love, but to celebrate Valentine’s Day we wanted to hone in on castles love built. While this amazing architecture seems like something out of a fairy tale, and a wonderfully romantic way to say I Will Always Love You, not all end with happily ever after. The irony is that almost all of these grand displays of love ended in tragedy. [15 Castles presented in 83 Photos]

• Tagged candid moments, couples kissing, holiday, kiss, kissing, love, midnight kiss, New Years Eve, people, public displays, romance

At the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve, it is a custom for couples to embrace and kiss in joyous celebration and to set the tone for the new year. On New Year’s Eve “an optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves,” stated Bill Vaughan. We wish you the magic of a midnight kiss, that crazy romantic kind of love where you are more lost in each other than where you are and who might be watching . . . Or who might be armed with a camera to catch the candid moments of expressing love and passion. If someone yells, “Get a room,” you probably got more caught up in the public display of affection than you realized. But who cares? You only live once. Here’s a candid collection of stolen kisses, romantic moments, and love quotes to live by. Happy New Year! Now get to kissing! [60 Photos]