The Château de Chambord in Chambord, Centre-Val de Loire, France, is one of the most recognisable châteaux in the world because of its very distinctive French Renaissance architecture, which blends traditional French medieval forms with classical Renaissance structures. The building was constructed by the king of France, Francis I.

Chambord is the largest château in the Loire Valley; it was built to serve as a hunting lodge for Francis I, who maintained his royal residences at the Château de Blois and Amboise. The original design of the château is attributed to the Tuscan architect Domenico da Cortona; Leonardo da Vinci may have also influenced the design.

Chambord was altered considerably during the 28 years of its construction (1519–1547), during which it was overseen on-site by Pierre Neveu. With the château nearing completion, Francis showed off his enormous symbol of wealth and power by hosting his old archrival, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, at Chambord.

In 1792, in the wake of the French Revolution, some of the furnishings were sold and timber removed. For a time the building was left abandoned, though in the 19th century some attempts were made at restoration. During the Second World War, art works from the collections of the Louvre and the Château de Compiègne were moved to the Château de Chambord. The château is now open to the public, receiving 700,000 visitors in 2007. Flooding in June 2016 damaged the grounds but not the château itself.

Châteaux in the 16th century departed from castle architecture. Indeed, while they were off-shoots of castles, with features commonly ᴀssociated with them, they did not have serious defences. Extensive gardens and water features, such as a moat, were common amongst châteaux from this period. Chambord is no exception to this pattern. The layout is reminiscent of a typical castle with a keep, corner towers, and defended by a moat. Built in Renaissance style, the internal layout is an early example of the French and Italian style of grouping rooms into self-contained suites, a departure from the medieval style of corridor rooms. The mᴀssive château is composed of a central keep with four immense bastion towers at the corners. The keep also forms part of the front wall of a larger compound with two larger towers. Bases for a possible further two towers are found at the rear, but these were never developed, and remain the same height as the wall. The château features 440 rooms, 282 fireplaces, and 84 staircases. Four rectangular vaulted hallways on each floor form a cross-shape.

The castle was never intended to provide any form of defence from enemies; consequently the walls, towers and partial moat are decorative, and even at the time were an anachronism. Some elements of architecture—open windows, loggias, and a vast outdoor area at the top—borrowed from the Italian Renaissance architecture—are less practical in cold and damp northern France.

The roofscape of Chambord contrasts with the mᴀsses of its masonry and has often been compared with the skyline of a town:^[7] it shows 11 kinds of towers and three types of chimneys, without symmetry, framed at the corners by the mᴀssive towers. The design parallels are north Italian and Leonardesque. Writer Henry James remarked, “the towers, cupolas, the gables, the lanterns, the chimneys, look more like the spires of a city than the salient points of a single building.”

One of the architectural highlights is the spectacular open double-spiral staircase that is the centrepiece of the château. The two spirals ascend the three floors without ever meeting, illuminated from above by a sort of light house at the highest point of the château. There are suggestions that Leonardo da Vinci may have designed the staircase, but this has not been confirmed. Writer John Evelyn said of the staircase, “it is devised with four [sic] entries or ascents, which cross one another, so that though four persons meet, they never come in sight, but by small loopholes, till they land. It consists of 274 steps (as I remember), and is an extraordinary work, but of far greater expense than use or beauty.”

The château also features 128 metres (420 ft) of façade, more than 800 sculpted columns and an elaborately decorated roof. When Francis I commissioned the construction of Chambord, he wanted it to look like the skyline of Constantinople.

The château is surrounded by a 52.5-square-kilometre (13,000-acre) wooded park and game reserve maintained with red deer, enclosed by a 31-kilometre (19-mile) wall. The king’s plan to divert the Loire to surround the château came about only in a novel; Amadís de Gaula, which Francis had translated. In the novel the château is referred to as the Palace of Firm Isle.

Chambord’s towers are atypical of French contemporary design in that they lack turrets and spires. In the opinion of author Tanaka Hidemichi, who suggests Leonardo da Vinci influenced the château’s design, they are closer in design to minarets of 15th-century Milan.