The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
THE PALACES
The pinnacled gables and grey-coned towers that soar above the surrounding town seem grand enough, but the château is a shadow of what it was when it reigned as the French kings’ favourite residence in the 15th and 16th centuries. Four-fifths of the palace were demolished in the 19th century as the owner couldn’t afford the upkeep.
Charles VII seized it from a renegade aristocrat in 1434 and it was rebuilt by Charles VIII in a mix of French gothic and Italian renaissance style. He shipped in Italian architects and gardeners to complete the job. But they seem not to have done enough to improve the headroom – Charles died after hitting his head on a door lintel.
During the demolition, one of the chapels and its graveyard (where Leonardo da Vinci was buried after he died in the arms of Francis I in 1519) were flattened. Leonardo’s broken gravestone and bones were supposedly found among the debris and reburied in the tiny gothic chapel now inscribed with his name. His own château, Clos Lucé, given to him by Francis I, is nearby (vinci-closluce.com/en).
Entry: £11.50; chateau-amboise.com
BLOIS: HALFWAY HOUSE
Another château surrounded by its own town, Blois was the ancestral home of Francois I’s first wife, Claude.
She was keen to move the court here from Amboise, but died too young for this to happen. Francis had taken an interest, however, and the site showcases some of the king’s first experiments with building in an Italianate style. He commissioned the octagonal staircase which formed the centrepiece of one range of the main quadrangle. There are many inconsistencies and infelicities in the design – you get the sense of decisions being made as construction progressed.
Entry: £11; chateaudeblois.fr
The ultimate folie de grandeur, Chambord – one of the biggest of all French châteaux – was commissioned by Francis I as a hunting lodge. The obviously complex and cerebral model behind the Chambord architecture seems to confirm the tradition that Leonardo was involved in at least the concept of the building. It is constructed in the shape of a cross containing 12 symmetrical apartments accessed from a central staircase. This is a double-helix formed of two intertwining stairs, which allow you to go up one flight and come back down the other. In truth, there is an elegant mathematical logic to it, but in practice it is hard to understand; all the hallmarks, some might say, of a Leonardo painting.
Entry: £12; chambord.org