Château de Chambord: A Deep Dive into the Loire's Royal Hunting Forest
Château de Chambord in the Loire Valley is the most architecturally ambitious of the Loire chateaus, but its garden setting is equally extraordinary: a 5,440-hectare walled park, the largest enclosed forest in Europe, with a recently restored Renaissance-French formal garden in front of the building.
François I's vision
Chambord was begun in 1519 by François I as a hunting lodge — an unusually ambitious one, with 426 rooms, 282 fireplaces and the famous double-helix staircase possibly designed by Leonardo da Vinci. François used the chateau only 72 days in his life.
The walled park
The 5,440 hectares are enclosed by a 32-kilometre wall, the longest park wall in Europe. The wall was begun under François I and completed under Louis XIV. The park is home to red deer, wild boar and other game; designated a National Hunting Reserve since 1947.
The lost formal garden
Louis XIV had a French formal garden laid out on the north side of the chateau in the 1680s. It survived only until the eighteenth century and was largely lost by the time the gardens were reorganised in the Romantic era.
The 2017 restoration
After 350 years of disuse, the formal garden was restored in 2017 from period documents and archaeological survey. 600 trees, 800 shrubs, 200 rose bushes and 16,000 plants were installed; the parterres are now maintained to seventeenth-century practice.
The forest as garden
Outside the formal area, the park's allées, vistas and game-rides have a designed quality of their own — particularly the eight-pointed cross of rides centred on the chateau, designed by Le Nôtre's contemporaries.
Practical visit
Open year-round; the formal garden is best from spring through autumn. Bike rental near the entrance allows exploration of the larger park; cycling routes total over 30 kilometres. The chateau itself takes another two hours.
Explore on the map
All of the gardens mentioned in this article are pinned on the interactive map. Use it to plan a route, group nearby sites into a single trip, or compare gardens by style and season.