Chateau De Chambord

Château de Chambord: Francis I’s Hunting Lodge

The largest château in the Loire Valley was originally conceived as a hunting lodge for Francis I, who started construction in 1519. He never finished it — the project ran over six decades — and he spent fewer than seven weeks there in total during his reign. The building was more a statement of Renaissance ambition than a practical residence. It has 440 rooms, 365 fireplaces, 84 staircases, and sits in a 5,440-hectare walled estate, the largest walled park in Europe.

What draws most visitors is the architecture itself. The château’s distinctive roofline — turrets, chimneys, dormers, and lanterns rising in controlled chaos above the Renaissance facade — is immediately recognisable from every postcard of the Loire. The double-helix staircase at the centre of the keep is the showpiece: two intertwined spiral staircases that share the same axis but never intersect, so that two people can ascend and descend simultaneously without passing each other. The staircase design has been attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, who died near Amboise in 1519, though documentary evidence for his involvement is circumstantial rather than conclusive.

Visiting

Entry to the château costs around €15 for adults. The château and grounds are open year-round; hours vary by season, with longer hours in summer. The roof terrace is included in the general ticket and gives the best view of the roofline from within the building. The ground floor contains a hunting museum; the upper royal apartments have been partially furnished to suggest how the rooms were used.

The parkland below the château covers 800 hectares of public access area (the remaining 4,600 are private reserve). A free shuttle bus runs between the car park and the château. Cycling within the public park is possible and the flat terrain makes it easy; bikes can be rented at the main entrance.

The Estate

Chambord’s walled park contains one of the largest enclosed forest reserves in France and has the highest concentration of red deer in Europe by area. The deer are visible from the roads through the park, particularly at dawn and dusk between September and November during rutting season. A viewing platform outside the château’s northern facade is set up specifically for watching the deer at close range during this period.

Getting There

Chambord is 14km east of Blois and about 170km south of Paris by the A10 motorway. There is no direct train; the nearest station is Blois, from which taxis or a summer shuttle service cover the remaining distance. For most visitors, driving is the practical option. The combination of Chambord with Cheverny (about 12km away, a more intimate château with private ownership and the original for Moulinsart in the Tintin books) and Chaumont-sur-Loire makes a reasonable full-day circuit of the central Loire.