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.

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.

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.

[1] 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.

[11] In the drawings of the model, the main staircase of the keep is shown with two straight, parallel flights of steps separated by a passage and is located in one of the arms of the cross.

[16] Such a rotative design has no equivalent in architecture at this period of history, and appears reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci's works on hydraulic turbines or the helicopter.

Had it been respected, it is believed that this unique building could have featured the quadruple-spiral open staircase, strangely described by John Evelyn and Andrea Palladio, although it was never built.

All furniture, wall coverings, eating implements and so forth were brought specifically for each hunting trip, a major logistical exercise.

Finally, in 1639 King Louis XIII gave it to his brother, Gaston, Duke of Orléans, who saved the château from ruin by carrying out much restoration work.

The king then added a 1,200-horse stable, enabling him to use the château as a hunting lodge and a place to entertain for a few weeks each year, for example Molière presented the premiere of his celebrated comedy, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme[19] here.

In 1745, as a reward for valour, the king gave the château to Maurice de Saxe, Marshal of France, who installed his military regiment there.

In 1792, the Revolutionary government ordered the sale of the furnishings; the wall panellings were removed and even floors were taken up and sold for the value of their timber, and, according to M de la Saussaye,[22] the panelled doors were burned to keep the rooms warm during the sales; the empty château was left abandoned until Napoleon Bonaparte gave it to his subordinate, Louis Alexandre Berthier.

The château was subsequently purchased from his widow for the infant Duke of Bordeaux, Henry Charles (1820–1883) who took the title Count of Chambord.

In Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimage Beyond the Sea, published in the 1830s, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow remarked on the dilapidation that had set in: "all is mournful and deserted.

The Château de Chambord was confiscated as enemy property in 1915, but the family of the duke of Parma sued to recover it, and that suit was not settled until 1932; restoration work was not begun until a few years after World War II ended in 1945.

[25] In 1939, shortly before the outbreak of World War II, the art collections of the Louvre and Compiègne museums (including the Mona Lisa)[citation needed] were stored at the Château de Chambord.

[26] The image of the château has been widely used to sell commodities from chocolate to alcohol and from porcelain to alarm clocks; combined with the various written accounts of visitors, this made Chambord one of the best known examples of France's architectural history.

The foundation observed that paradoxically the natural disaster effected Francis I's vision that Chambord appears to rise from the waters as if it were diverting the Loire.

[34][35] Between 1874 and 1889, the country house in Buckinghamshire, Waddesdon Manor, was built with similar architectural frameworks as the Château de Chambord, disseminated via the architect Gabriel-Hippolyte Destailleur.