Leviathan

A building with its own skyline

Approaching the stunning 16th-century Château de Chambord is more like a seeing some natural wonder than a man-made structure. At the end of its long allée, it shimmers with elegant bulk, much like Monument Valley or Devil's Tower from extreme distance. It is designed like some enormous organism, with interior and exterior bilateral symmetry along two axes. The beast's "spine" is an innovative double helix staircase, said to have been inspired by a design by Leonardo. On it two courtiers could ascend and descend without ever meeting, but still admire (or disdain) each other through the apertures in the central axis.

The core of the double helix

The place seems too big for mere furniture. One might as well clothe a brontosaurus. The roof is a veritable sculpture park--or to perpetuate the metaphor, the back of a great spiny leviathan, from which visitors could float on an ocean of lawns, watching royal hunts miles in the distance. 


With 440 rooms, 282 fireplaces and 13,000 acres of parkland, it is by far the largest pile in the Loire. In conception as much as size, everything else seems puny by comparison. Not a building to love, really, but one to inspire fear and awe--the emotions of the sublime.

© 2012 Nicholas Nicastro