Chambord Castle

The Royal Castle of Chambord (in French Château de Chambord) is located in the Central region of France and is one of the most famous castles in the world due to its very distinctive French Renaissance architecture, combining traditional French medieval forms. with classical renaissance structures. The building, which was never completed, was built by Francis I. 

Chambord is the largest castle in the Loire Valley; it was built as a hunting lodge for Francis I, who maintained his royal residences at Château de Blois and Amboise. The original design of Chambord Castle is attributed to the Italian architect Domenico da Cortona; Leonardo da Vinci may also have been involved or influenced the design.

Chambord was significantly modified during the twenty-eight years of its construction (1519–1547), during which it was under the supervision of Pierre Nepveu. As the castle neared completion, Francis displayed his great symbol of wealth and power by receiving his old arch-rival, Emperor Charles V, into Chambord.

In 1792, after the French Revolution, some of the furniture was sold and the wood was removed. For some time the building remained abandoned, although attempts were made to restore it in the 19th century.

Architecture as designed. Castles in the 16th century moved away from fortress architecture; they had branches, with the features usually associated with them, they no longer had serious protection. Extensive gardens and water features such as a moat were common in castles of this period. Chambord is no exception to this type. The layout resembles a typical castle with a citadel, corner towers and a protected moat. Built in Renaissance style, the interior layout is an early example of the French and Italian style of grouping rooms into separate apartments, a departure from the medieval style of corridor rooms. The massive castle consists of: a central fortress with four huge bastion towers at the corners. The tower is also part of the front wall of a larger complex with two more large towers. The bases for a possible additional two towers are at the rear, but these were never built and remain at the same height as the wall. The castle has 440 rooms, 282 fireplaces and 84 staircases. Four rectangular vaulted corridors on each floor form a cruciform shape.

The castle was never meant to be a defense against enemies; hence the walls, towers and partial moat were decorative and even at the time anachronistic. Some elements of the architecture – open windows, a loggia and a vast open area above – borrowed from the architecture of the Italian Renaissance – are less practical in cold and damp northern France.

Carefully thought out roof line. The façade of the tower is asymmetrical except for the northwest façade, which was recently changed when two wings were added to the castle.

The landscape of Chambord’s roof contrasts with the mass of its masonry and is often compared to the skyline of the city: it shows eleven types of towers and three types of chimneys without symmetry, flanked at the corners by massive towers. Design parallels are Northern Italian and Leonard. Writer Henry James observed that “towers, domes, gables, lanterns, chimneys are more like the spiers of a city than like the protruding parts of a single building.

One of the architectural highlights is the impressive open double spiral staircase that forms the centerpiece of the castle. Two spirals rise up three floors, never meeting each other, lit from above by a kind of beacon on the highest point of the castle. There are suggestions that Leonardo da Vinci could have designed the stairs, but this has not yet been confirmed. The writer John Evelyn said of the stairs “it consists of four entrances or rises which intersect each other, so that although four people meet, they never come into view, except through small slits, until they land. It consists of 274 steps (as far as I remember) and it is an extraordinary work, but much more expensive than use or beauty.”

The castle also has a 128-meter façade, over 800 sculpted columns and an elaborately decorated roof. When Francis I commissioned the construction of Chambord, he wanted it to look like a panorama of Constantinople.

The castle is surrounded by a 52.5 square kilometers (13,000 acres) forest park and a red deer sanctuary surrounded by a 31 km (19 mile) wall. The king’s plan to divert the Loire in order to surround the castle never materialized.

The towers of Chambord are atypical of modern French design in that they lack turrets and spiers. According to author Tanaka, who suggests that Leonardo da Vinci was an influence on the design of the castle, they are closer in design to the minarets of Milan in the 15th century.