Chateau de Chambord

ChambordFrance

1 May

A French Chateau with a whole lot to offer, and supposedly is said to rival that of Versailles

From the mystery surrounding the architect to the clear influences of a great mind to the significant role it still plays today.

Building the Chateau

The Chateau that can be found at Chambord is such a beautiful place, and is known to be the largest castle of Loire Valley. As a symbol of the French Renaissance as well as of power for the ruler who constructed it, Chambord’s brilliant architectural features really can go up against the likes of Versailles.

And it’s those same architectural features that may confuse the average visitor as to the chateau’s original purpose. Even though the chateau looks like a medieval castle, it’s really all just for show, its purpose since its conception was always as a hunting lodge. Ahh the French and their displays of wealth and power.

And this is where we first meet Francis I. He’d spent his youth gallivanting through France and developed a keen passion for hunting. Don’t we all. So when he ended up becoming King in 1515 he decided what he really needed was a good old fashioned castle surrounded by an amply stocked forest so that he could pop on by and go hunting whenever the feeling struck him. Hence why you’ll find Chateau de Chambord smack bang in the middle of the Boulogne forest, right up against the river that goes by the Cosson.

Now as we know, the French like killing multiple birds with one stone, so while Francis has his full-time hunting lodge, it had to not only function like a hunting lodge but it also had to look like something worthy of a French king, and that’s how we end up with a medieval façade. But as much effort was put into how the damn thing looked, so too was there an immense amount of effort put into the hunting grounds surrounding the castle. Francis was super keen to have the best hunting estate around, so he bought up some large tracts of land and ended up having plenty of space to wander through with over 2500 hectares.

The construction of the chateau started only a couple years after Francis was crowned, and from 1519 through to 1547, construction was underway. But issues plagued this construction site from the beginning, and poor Francis never saw his hunting lodge finished, at least not officially. That would go to a bloke we met over at Versailles, the Sun King, Louis XIV. Known for his love of the visually extreme, he’s the one who we can credit for completing the castle and making some changes so that it functioned as a proper chateau.

Once finished the Chateau was known to impress. Here’s what Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor at the time thought of the place:

A summing up … of human industry.

And the place looked so perfect that the kings that came after were pretty reluctant to make their own changes, especially to the exterior. Although we do know that Louis XIV added in some French gardens in the immediate area around the Chateau, man that guy sure did love his gardens. Louis XV was known to bunker down at Chambord through most of the winter, so he made the place as comfortable as possible adding wood panelling, paraquet flooring and a couple of false ceilings. And then as we head into 1745, Chambord is out of royal hands and is the permanent residence for the Maréchal de Saxe who wanted to cosy up the place a little so added in some furnishings and created some nice paths through the gardens and wider estate.

But as with anything that had any connection to the monarchy, the chateau was stripped of anything valuable, including its prized game, throughout the French Revolution. And after Napoleon’s General had done what he would with it, the Chateau found itself with a ‘For Sale’ sign out the front in 1819.

Thankfully an exiled Duke, who went by the Duc de Bordeaux ended up with the Chateau in his hands in 1821, but due to being in exile didn’t actually get a chance to see the place in the flesh until quite a while later in 1871. And despite not having visited until a good 50 years after he purchased it, he would go around introducing himself as the Comte de Chambord, that’s the Count of Chambord for those a bit rusty on their French.

In order to make things work financially, the ‘Count’ opened Chambord up to the public, but it was clear the neglect has taken its toll. Thankfully as the second half of the 19th century rolled around, extensive work was done to restore a vast majority of the chateau to working order.

And then in 1930, the Chateau found itself in the capable hands of the French state, and those restoration and renovation works haven’t really stopped since.

Parts of the Chateau

So as we already know the chateau was designed as a hunting retreat, and Chambord is unique in that it looks very much like a medieval castle, even though when it was built there was no need for any kind of military defence. Which tells us that the medieval façade was purely to impress the guests of the King and to show off his wealth and power. Basically it was the King saying, look at me I can build a medieval castle and use it as a hunting lodge, because I’m the King and I can do whatever I want even if it doesn’t make a lick of sense.

The centre of the Chateau is a square keep, which also goes by donjon for those who don’t speak any French, each corner of the square has a round tower with a conical roof and a lantern on the top, you know in case you’re struggling to find your way home after dark. What’s interesting about this central square is that, as well as the four corner towers, it also has a central tower complete with its own flying buttresses, and it certainly stands above the rest at 56 metres tall.

Naturally our chateau has wings, and a circuit wall with its own circular towers, but these circular towers are mini at only one storey high.

What’s really intriguing about the Chateau de Chambord is that it was being built at a time when Italian Renaissance architects were trying out a whole heap of new things, making Chambord quite fancy with its several innovations.

For our first innovation we need look no further than the Medici villa at Poggio a Caiano, the similarity here being the layout of the central keep, which when viewed from above will look very similar to a Greek cross, identified by each arm being twice its width.

And who was the brilliant architectural genius who laid out the chateau in this manner? Well that my fellow destination historians is the mystery. The chateau’s architect’s identity has remained hidden, a couple of names have been put forward throughout the years but none have seemed to catch on. The reason for this mystery can be found by the fact that there appears to be no paperwork related to the construction of the chateau. Usually you may find some receipts, plans or letters that speaks about the construction of a royal building, but there really is nothing that can be found by anyone for Chambord. It’s thought that the records were either dispersed or destroyed for some reason that has been lost to us at the end of the 18th century, so I guess we’ll never really know.

The second innovation we will marvel at today is the double spiral staircase which you’ll find the rising through the centre of the keep. What’s really interesting about this staircase, is that it really is an engineering masterpiece and a truly revolutionary design and experience for going up and down stairs. Clearly inspired by Leonardo da Vinci, though it’s unlikely that Leo was the one who built the thing as the chateau’s construction started about 6 months after the bloke had died, although sidenote: Francis I did invite Leo to live in France where he would be

first painter, architect and engineer of the King.

Not a bad job title if I do say so myself. But back to the stairs at hand.

So the genius in the stairs is that there are not one but two helical stairs that twist around each other. And what’s truly crazy about these twisting twin stairs is that you can walk up them without ever meeting anyone going down. So the stairs twist a full 360 degrees between every floor, meaning that you’ll be able to keep those going the other way in view but you’ll never actually meet. How crazy is that? It can be a little hard to wrap your head around, so if you’re struggling check out this video that hopefully shows you a little clearer how the thing works.

You won’t be able to miss the Italian inspiration in the classical ornamentations in the window frames and mouldings which really do up the fanciness of the exterior façade. And the top of the chateau isn’t all about sloping rooves, there are walkways and terraces you can venture out on to for a pretty awesome view of the park and forest.

All up, the chateau has 426 rooms, 83 staircases and 282 fireplaces with 200 ornate chimneys to go along with them. These days most of the rooms are pretty much empty but about 60 of the royal suites have been refurbished and are open for visitors.

If you’ve got your glasses on you just might be able to spot one of the hundreds of emblems of Francis I here and there in the shape of the letter F or the Salamander. The Salamander is a unique animal, it’s a small amphibian that loves water just as much as it loves land, and is what Francis I choose as his emblem along with the motto:

I eat the good fire, I put out the bad.

This ties into the belief that salamanders are resistant to fire. Although during its period of neglect, Gustave Flaubert, a French novelist, noted somewhat sadly on his visit to Chambord that

the spider weaves its web on the salamander of Francis I.

And yet it is because of Francis and his salamander that we can stare in wonder at the chateau still standing today.

The park and gardens

Even with the majesty of its chateau, Chambord is probably best known for its park and gardens. It turns out the place is the largest walled and enclosed park in all of Europe, spanning across about 13 500 acres, which happens to be the same area as Paris. So you’re in a for a good long walk if you visit.

Throughout the middle ages, the Boulogne Forest, where the National Estate of Chambord sits, was the property of the Counts of Blois, but by 1498 it had become a crown property and therefore a royal domain. And seeing that the King always needs more land the bounds of the Estate expanded with Francis I annexing 6200 acres of farmland to add to his growing Estate. But Francis was fully aware that he would need help maintaining his ever-growing land and so in 1542 he appointed some royal captaincies who were tasked with

[ensuring] with the utmost rigor the maintenance and conservation of the shrubs and bushes, of the black and red beasts of this park, for our pleasure and pastime of hunting.

Quite a bit of responsibility. And with great responsibility comes the abuse of power. And these captains to the King were no different. Even though the breaches in the walls to get to some of the good quality royal game reduced, most offences were severely punished with locals often being abused, which eventually led to Louis XIV ending the royal captaincy of Chambord in 1777.

But before all of this, Francis I’s main source of anxiety was sorting out the Cosson River which crossed straight through the estate. The Cosson was pretty wild, with many a marsh popping up along its banks and around the chateau, forcing Jacque du Cerceau to comment in 1576

[the Cosson] in no way echoed the magnificence of the chateau.

And so Francis thought that the only way to control the flow of water was to divert some water all the way over from the Loire, but nothing ever really happened, which may explain why Chambord didn’t have any official French renaissance gardens. Although rumours and a couple of 17th century diagrams tells us that there may have been some small gardens in the immediate vicinity of the chateau, although they were most likely small vege gardens.

In 1645, the Chambord Estate finally stopped growing when the Duke of Orleans finished the perimeter wall, giving the Estate its size that it still holds today, 13 500 acres. And this wall is not small, it’s actually a good 32km long and about 2.5m high to keep all those miscreants out. It was mainly constructed of limestone, and as the years rolled on doors were carved out of the wall to allow people to come and go.

Once our old friend Louis XIV had come to power we start to see his mark on the chateau take place in the form of some good old fashioned French gardens. We know from Versailles that he loved a good garden. He even brought in his good mate Jules Hardouin-Mansart to get started on two formal gardens for out the front of the chateau, which got underway around 1684.

With the Cosson River eventually canalised in an effort to control its flow of water, we get to 1745 where Louis XV has given Chambord to the Marshal General of France at the time, a Maurice de Saxe. Even though Maurice was around for only a couple of years he wasted no time in improving the garden with some good quality trees. A 1751 inventory tells us that there were 250 pineapple trees, 121 orange trees, 1 lemon tree, and 1 lime tree. Plenty of fruit for everyone.

But like all great estates, Chambord suffered while the people revolted, and the garden that had been lovingly created over a hundred years or so suffered from a lack of maintenance.

As we come into the 19th century and the early 20th century, the Estate fell into the hands of Henry, the Duke of Bordeaux, who also happened to be the grandson of Charles X. Now Henry wasn’t much of a gardener so he kept what remained of the simple garden the best he could. He had brought in a landscape architect that went by Achille Duchêne to replant the whole thing, but this never ended up happening.

As we head into the mid-20th century, we start to see some movement in getting a garden back with parterre divisions and some trees and bushes being planted, but by 1970 that had all disappeared with just a nice big lawn in its place. But perhaps this was so they could start with a clean slate as two years later, the moats were refilled and in 2016 the replanting of the 18th century formal gardens layout had commenced.

The project was overseen by the General Manager of the Estate, Jean d’Haussonville who had about 100 people get involved in replanting the formal gardens. And so the gardens that Louis XIV loved so much were restored to be almost identical to what the King would have seen as he looked out his Chambord window. After a good seven months of hard work, the gardens were officially opened to the public in March 2017, and you can still get amongst them today.

Now that we know a good deal about the gardens, let’s get into the fascination that is the Chambord park and forest. So stags have always been a local to the area of the estate and it’s probably this reason why Francis I was drawn to the place. These days you’ll see many a stag and probably many a boar as well. There’s actually a couple of different species you’ll see wandering about including the rare roe deer that were introduced to the area in 1950. And there’s even quite a few species of forest animals that are being watched closely to ensure conservation of the area and the species. In fact the range of species found on the Chambord Estate make it a great place to study fauna in their natural habitat.

Now the park is highly managed, and it has to be especially with its large-animal population and no apex predators to keep it in check. There were even strict rules around hunting back when Francis I was in power, which really did play to his favour with the King and the nobility being the only ones allowed to hunt or even bear arms during peacetime. And then of course the French Revolution democratised hunting. But it may shock a couple of our destination historians to hear that hunting does still take place quite regularly on the Chambord Estate, and it actually plays a really important role in managing the numbers of animals.

If the deer and boars were left to their own devices they would decimate the forest area, and with the population of stags and does growing by about 30% each year it would get to the point where the vegetation wouldn’t have a chance to recover meaning that there would be no food left for any of them. So in order to keep the animal numbers in line with the hosting capacity of the environment humans need to play the role of the predator to keep everything in balance.

And of course like all good conservationists, some stags are also caught to be transported to inhabit and increase the population in other sites. In fact because Chambord has such a high population of stags and does, almost 100 of them are caught every year to be moved to other parts of France and wider Europe to increase the population there. Making Chambord the site to go to if you want to recover your population of wild deer.

The park is not just managed for the wild deer, but forestry and landscape management also take a very close look at protecting the biodiversity of the place. Which really means ensuring the forest is maintained and preserved, wood is collected when necessary and also making it a good spot for visitors and involving them in the process. In fact a whole third of the Estate is a natural resinous wood. So if you ever need natural French resin you now know where to go.

One of the main ways the forest is maintained is about every ten years, when the forest has reached maturity, there will be a ‘thinning’ out, to allow new growth to form and an influx of native animals. And because the canalisation of the Cosson didn’t solve all the marshy problems, about 20 of the remaining marshes are also drained every year or so to avoid them getting too full. So as you can see a real amount of thought and effort goes into the conservation of the natural forest and park on the estate.

And the uses of Chambord just keep growing. Because of how well the whole place has been preserved, it turns out it’s pretty good for scientific research. In fact, the goal within the next ten years is to become one of the top ten sites for studying large wild ungulates, which are basically the wild deer.

The National Reserve of Hunting and Wild Fauna is leading the research, but as it turns out France is actually really well suited for it. The Chambord Estate is large enough to preserve the natural behaviour of the animals whilst having that wall to protect them from the outside industrialised world. So we can thank Francis I and his insatiable need for hunting, because there just simply isn’t any possible way that we could recreate such a large closed environment for this kind of scientific research within France, and there’s no way you could find a space as large as Paris to do it in.

So not only is the Chambord chateau a great preservation of a hunting lodge masquerading as a medieval palace and the coming and going of its gardens, it plays an incredibly important part in the study of large wild and native fauna within Europe, and the importance of it remaining so with preservation and conservation cannot be overstated.

Visiting the Chateau

So if you’re into everything we’ve discussed so far, you might be thinking ‘how do I get myself over to France to check this place out?’ well you’re in luck because the chateau is open to the public. So when you next find yourself in the area you’ll be free to wander around checking out the stables, the gardens, the museum that’s been dedicated to the Comte de Chambord and the exhibition galleries, you might even be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of a 16th century tapestry or two.

And if it’s all the talk of a preserved forest that got you all excited, you can visit there as well. There are many trails and bike paths that allow you to experience the forest in all its majesty. In fact the Chambord Estate was one of the first places to install observation spots in 1969 to watch the animals without disturbing them. And today you’ll find at least 11 of them that are open to the public. Some are pretty bloody big, being able to hold around 50 people, which others are really small with room for only about 3 or 4. These observation platforms give the viewer a unique opportunity to view a wild animal in its natural habitat, which can be quite a unique experience and definitely different to viewing an animal in a zoo.

But Chambord also doesn’t live entirely in the past, Discover Chambord is an augmented reality that can be experienced in 3D. When visiting make sure to pick up a Histopad, an interactive digital tablet which gives you some pretty immersive experiences that I’m told are nothing short of spectacular.

And if you’re flush with cash, then you can’t look any further than staying directly next door to the chateau. The Hotel Relais de Chambord is a 4 star hotel that opened in March 2018 literally 50 metres from the main castle. There are 55 rooms to choose from, making you’re visit super easy on the whole travel time.

And of course we can’t go past the gift shop without popping our heads in and you might be pleasantly surprised about just how many products are manufactured from the natural resources of the park. Sign me up for some of that French resin. It was actually just a couple years ago in 2019, that the chateau celebrated the 500th anniversary of its construction, complete with wine produced on the estate.

It seems the Chambord Estate has done pretty much everything, including being on the initial list of historic monuments in France all the way back in 1840 and finding itself added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1981, it certainly is a Renaissance chateau that has stood the test of time.

And of course last year, 2021, saw the chateau celebrate the 200th anniversary of it being open to the public, as it continues to be and hopefully will continue for many a year to come.