From afar, the edifice is an arabesque; it looks like a woman whose hair has been blown into the air by the wind…”.
With these words, Chateaubriand describes Chambord’s double-revolving staircase in Vie de France (1884).
Both a curiosity and an architectural feat, this monumental structure allows two people to ascend or descend without ever meeting. The staircase alone symbolizes the excessiveness of this château, the brainchild of King François I, who wanted to build a replica of Île Ferme, the imaginary palace of Amadis de Gaule’s hero. Chambord is a dream of which Leonardo da Vinci drew the first sketches, but which François I never saw completed. A jewel that artists and writers never tired of celebrating.
Alfred de Vigny likened it to a palace from the Thousand and One Nights that an Eastern genius had “stolen from the lands of the sun to hide in those of the fog with the loves of a handsome prince”.
October 2019 Leonard De Serres 2Royal insignia and famous guests
A masterpiece of the French Renaissance, Chambord nevertheless retains elements of medieval architecture with its central keep flanked by four towers. In addition to numerous Renaissance decorations, the château is adorned with a host of coats of arms, fleur-de-lys and crowned salamanders, the animal emblem of François I. Such is the number of these royal insignia that, during the French Revolution, a commissioner in charge of destroying them reportedly gave up in the face of the magnitude of the task!
Although Francis I only spent a few nights in the palace – an incredible feat when you consider that the château has some four hundred and forty rooms! -Other illustrious men stayed here. The most famous of them all, Louis XIV, installed apartments here. Sumptuous festivities were held here and, in 1670, Molière staged the premieres of Monsieur de Pourceaugnac and Le Bourgeois gentilhomme.
From May to September, Chambord revives the château’s heyday with an equestrian show written and directed by Gonzague Saint Bris. In the open air, in the grounds of the Maréchal de Saxe’s stables, the troupe’s costumed riders invite the public on a journey “Into the forest of history”…
