Château de Chambord
France > Loire > Cities > Chaumont > Chambord

Chambord

The Château de Chambord, François I's little "hunting lodge", is the largest and most popular of the Loire châteaux (daily: April–Sept 9am–6.15pm; Oct–March 9am–5.15pm; €7) and one of the most extravagant commissions of its age. Its patron's principal object – to outshine the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V – would, he claimed, leave him renowned as "one of the greatest builders in the universe".

Before you even get close, the sheer gargantuan scale of the place is awe-inspiring: there are over 440 rooms and 85 staircases, and a petrified forest of 365 chimneys runs wild on the roof. In architectural terms, the mixture of styles is as outrageous as the size. The Italian architect Domenico de Cortona was chosen to design the Château in 1519 in an effort to establish prestigious Italian Renaissance art forms in France, though the labour was supplied by French masons. The château's plan (attributed by some to da Vinci) is pure Renaissance: rational, symmetrical and totally designed to express a single idea – the central power of its owner. Four hallways run crossways through the central keep, at the heart of which the Great Staircase rises up in two unconnected spirals before opening out into the great lantern tower, which draws together the confusion on the roof like a great crown.

The cold, draughty size of the Château made it unpopular as an actual residence – François I himself stayed there for less than forty days in total – and Chambord's role in history is slight. A number of rooms on the first floor were fitted out by Louis XIV and his son, the Comte de Chambord, and as reconstructed today they feel like separate apartments within the unmanageable whole. You can explore them freely, along with the adjacent eighteenth century apartments, where the Château was made habitable by lowering ceilings, building small fireplaces within the larger ones, and cladding the walls with the fashionable wooden panelling known as boiseries. The second floor houses a rambling Museum of Hunting where, among the endless guns and glorificatory paintings, are two superb seventeenth-century tapestry cycles: one depicts Diana, goddess of the hunt; another, based on cartoons by Lebrun, tells the story of Meleager, the heroic huntsman from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Children love playing on the double spiral staircase that leads up to the airy rooftop, where you can get a good feel for the contrasting and occasionally discordant architectural styles.

The summer events and festivals calendar is a busy one, with night-time lighting displays, guided walks in the forest, costumed tours for children and a twice-daily dressage display, among other attractions.

The Parc de Chambord around the Château is an enormous walled game reserve – the largest in Europe. Wild boars roam freely, though red deer are the beasts you're most likely to spot. You can explore on foot or by bike or boat – both rentable from the jetty where the Cosson passes alongside the main facade of the Château – and even on horseback, with mounts rented from the Centre Equestre near the Château (tel 02.54.20.31.01).

Accommodation in the village of Chambord itself can be found right opposite the Château (and right beside the fast-food restaurants and postcard stalls) at the Hôtel du Grand St-Michel (tel 02.54.20.31.31, fax 02.54.20.36.40; €40–85), where the more expensive rooms have direct views of the Château. In BRACIEUX, a small village just beyond the southern wall of the Parc de Chambord, 8km from the Château, the Hôtel de la Bonnheure, 9bis rue R.-Masson (tel 02.54.46.41.57, fax 02.54.46.05.90; €40–55) has various rooms and apartments set around lovely floral gardens. Bracieux also has a campsite (tel 02.54.46.41.84; closed mid-Oct to mid-April).