Day 10: Chateaux Cheverny and Chambord

Chateau Cheverny is a lovely house, but smaller than most of the other notable French chateaux in the Loire region.

Cheverny was built in the 17th century by the Hurault family who still live in one wing of the castle. Because the same family has owned the castle for such a long time (and in fact the current Marquis de Hurault and his young family still live in one wing of the house), the family's furnishings dating to the 17th and 18th centuries are still in place, making this the most beautifully furnished chateaux of all.

If Cheverny is small, Chambord is the opposite end of the spectrum. With 426 rooms sitting on 5,440 hectares (about 14,000 acres) of parkland and forest that is surrounded by a wall 32 KM in length, Chambord is the "granddaddy" of all French chateaux.

Aside from its beautiful architecture and the artistry of its stone carvings, it is a big, drafty, cold stone house with high ceilings, dark rooms, and a totally unworkable floor plan. Chambord started out at as a hunting lodge in the middle of a marshy forest, but after a long line of egotistical French royalty got involved, things quickly got out of hand. Francois I, who was very ambitious in all matters, envisioned a structure that would demonstrate the majesty and power of the French crown. Little did he know that it would take more than one hundred years to complete construction.

The entrance is dominated by a 30-foot wide double spiral stone staircase that was probably designed, or at least influenced by Leonardo Davinci. It looks like a giant double helix molecule of DNA. It rises to the top of the castle with a large hollow center shaft to let in light. It is possible to go up and down the staircase and glimpse but never see people on the other spiral. But for the royalty, windows were created on both sides of each set of steps so they could see how pretty each other looked as they went up and down.

The last in a long line of French royalty to actually own Chambord was Henry, Count de Chambord, who was born next in line to be King of France just when the French people decided they no longer needed one. Nevertheless, following his birth in 1821, Henry was groomed to be king his whole life based on the hopes of his mother and a group of loyal royalists. He was almost restored to the throne in the 1870's, but he got into a tiff with a faction of royalists over whether the new national flag of France would be the white flag and fleur-de-lis of the Bourbons (Henry's family) or the traditional tri-color flag of France. It all fell apart over this spat. Hmmm....big egos deciding the fate of a nation but getting hung up on frivolous, non-sensical details. I guess some things never change....