The Château de Chambord is the largest in the Loire Valley and one of the most famous in France. It is believed that Leonardo da Vinci himself had a hand in its architecture.
Construction of the castle began in 1519 on the orders of the handsome and jouirah Francis I, who wanted to be close to his mistress Countess Claude de Turi of the Rogan family, who lived nearby. The site for the castle was chosen by the water, on a bend in the river Cosson. History has not preserved the name of the architect who fulfilled the whim of the king, but legend attributes the participation in the design of Leonardo da Vinci.
It is difficult to say to what extent this great artist, scientist, engineer was involved in the project: in France under royal patronage Leonardo was in 1516, and died on 2 May 1519. But the staircase of the castle of two intertwined spirals bears the imprint of genius: its branches are nested in each other so that those going up and down it can not meet.
The construction of the castle was one of the outstanding engineering enterprises of the French Renaissance. 220,000 tonnes of stone were brought in, the river was diverted into a special moat, twelve-metre oak piles were driven into the swampy soil and the foundations were laid on them. The rectangular castle was built around a central fortified object, which according to the tradition of the Middle Ages was called a donjon. Inside the donjon there are 5 residential floors. The length of the castle facade is 156 metres, it has 426 rooms, 77 staircases, 282 fireplaces.
Francis I managed to hunt in the vicinity of Chambord only a few times (mostly in the company of court beauties). Later monarchs were not too interested in the castle, Louis XIII gave it to his brother Gaston of Orleans. Louis XIV undertook the reconstruction of Chambord, and it was here on 14 October 1670 that the great Molière first successfully presented to the king his "Bourgeois in Nobility". Later, the deposed Polish king Stanislaw Leszczynski lived in the chateau. During the Revolution, Chambord was looted, Napoleon gave it to Marshal Berthier, during the Franco-Prussian War it was a hospital.
In 1930, the castle was bought by the French state, and in 1939, five days before the declaration of war with Germany, the Louvre museum workers launched an operation to transport art treasures to the countryside. The priceless Mona Lisa and Venus of Milos went to Chambord among other works. The Nazis did not discover them; after the war they returned unharmed to the Louvre.
The chateau was endangered more than once: On 22 June 1944, an American B-24 bomber crashed right on its lawn; in 1945, a fire partially destroyed the roof of the donjon. In 1947, work began to turn the castle into a tourist attraction.
Now Chambord is visited by more than 700 thousand tourists annually. In addition to the magnificent architecture and the view from the upper terrace, the visitor has the opportunity to appreciate the marvellous tapestries "The Hunt of King Francis", dating back to the first quarter of the XVII century. These works predate the famous Royal Tapestry of Paris.
On a side note
- Location: Château, Chambord
- Official website: http://www.chambord.org/
- Opening hours: open daily except for 1 and 31 January and 25 December. From 2 January to 31 March - from 10.00 to 17.00, from 1 April to 30 September - from 9.00 to 18.00, from 1 October to 31 December - from 10.00 to 17.:00.:00. The box office will stop working half an hour before closing time.
- Tickets: the ticket price is 11 euros.
