Showing the Mansard roof put on by the celebrated architect, Mansart, at the order of Louis XIV, to accommodate a large court.
TOWER OF THE GRAND STAIRCASE
Château de Chambord.
HALL IN THE CHÂTEAU de CHAMBORD
The two stairways seen in the back wind around the same central shaft and never join.
Four hundred feet square along its outer walls, this vast château was designed by Francis I merely as a hunting seat. The chief exterior attraction of the building lies in its roof. This is a very maze of gables, dormers, chimneys, and cupolas, dominated by the lantern that crowns the center stair, and in which lights were hung to guide belated hunters from the forest.
THE STAIRWAY OF CHAMBORD
This stairway is the chief attraction of the interior. Sweeping round a central newel which forms an open well, it rises the full height of the building. Moreover, it is not a single flight of steps, but two, so placed that one person may go up and one come down, yet never meet. From this stairway four large halls open at every floor, and four hundred and forty rooms and fifty other stairs fill up the wings of this great palace. The interior, when richly furnished, must have been magnificent.