Was This 400-Room Medieval Marvel Designed By Leonardo Da Vinci?

Château de Chambord is one of the most stunning architectural masterpieces of the French Renaissance, shrouded in mystery and grandeur. Commissioned by King Francis I in 1518, the château is believed to have been influenced by Leonardo da Vinci, whose innovative designs shaped its unique structure, including the iconic double-helix staircase. With over 400 rooms, 77 staircases, and a sprawling 5,500-hectare park, Chambord was more than a royal residence, it was a statement of power and artistic ambition. Despite its magnificence, many of its original plans were lost, adding to the enigma of its creation. Even today, experts continue to uncover secrets hidden within its walls, cementing Chambord’s status as an architectural wonder.

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shadow the shambor the Jewel of the French Renaissance situated 110 Mi south of Paris lost in the middle of a forest is one of the most impressive chadow in the luah valley its outline is enthralling its extravagance is overwhelming with 156 M facade this chatow has more than 400 rooms 77 staircases and 282 chimneys chambo isn’t a chatau it’s a masterpiece surrounded by a 5,500 hect Park the equivalent of a small City this Shadow’s design is still a thing of Wonder five centuries later how were they able to achieve something so perfect in the 16th century we’re going to talk you through this incredible project which required Monumental resources in the 16th century 1,800 workmen worked on this project over the years it was an exceptional project what technical Feats did these Builders accomplish at the time in order to put together these revolutionary structures this piece cannot be dismantled without the whole thing breaking that’s what’s exceptional about it we are dealing with something completely unique from the Monumental Central staircase to the thousands of sculptures to the hundreds of Chimes that sit at top the building what challenges had to be overcome in order to satisfy the every whim of the Shadow’s commissioner King France is the first the king takes a decision and it gets done taking on this project really became something of a financial drain a project that also holds the story of a mystery that’s never been solved we have absolutely no floor plans at all why does the shadow of Leonardo da Vinci the greatest Genius of the Renaissance Loom across the Shadow the Shambo he called Leonardo da Vinci my father he was in aura this illustrious old man using new 3D animation software we’ll roll back the clock and explore the timeline of this incredible structure unique in its time I don’t think we could create something better even now accounts from the best Specialists will reveal the construction Secrets behind this Stone Giant now kept under very tight surveillance 500 years after its construction the secrets behind the Shadow the shambor are finally being revealed the shatow the Shambo looks like no other Royal building in the world that’s what has made it such a popular attraction each year almost 1 million visitors come to Rome through the corridors of this distinctive [Music] chatau as you walk in you feel like you’re getting lost in a maze on each flooor you have to go to the windows and look outside and think okay I’m on this side now otherwise you lose your bearings it’s a chateau that’s very hard to fully conjure up in your mind it houses 440 rooms some of which have 6 M High ceilings it has 77 staircases more than the Palace of versailes and its corridors are as long as an airliner this Chateau is a giant architectural treasure hunt the sheer size and organization of shambor pose a challenge Shambo is a cryptic message with its non-standard Dimensions it was able to conceal some of the Lou’s greatest works of art during the second world war including the famous Mona Lisa it was like alibaba’s caves with boxes wherever you looked 3 to 4,000 crates were stored in chambo at one point Shambo had 4,000 cubed met of works of art statues and crates however this Shadow featured on the UNESCO world heritage list very nearly never came into [Music] existence while it was being built nobody believed such a project was possible no one except one man the year is 1518 here in the lais valley city of blua the home of the new king of France France’s the first is only 24 years old and he’s already the most powerful King in Europe Francis I first in 1515 was a Feister young man he was an ambitious King a strategic king and a Visionary too we know his aim was to somehow become the emperor of Europe [Music] in 1515 King Francis the first had conquered the Swiss in Marino so this young man who wasn’t necessarily supposed to ascend the throne suddenly had everything to demonstrate his Power King Francis the first wanted to build things and Mark his own era very quickly he launched a huge construction program he was a construction King he’s one of the great historic Builders and when he walked into his Shadow he’d draw sketches of what he’d done and what he wanted to do and I imagine he’d have been an architect had he not been King over the course of his Reign he built 12 Shadow more than any other king but King Francis the first wanted to go even further and in 1518 he decided to invent a new type of [Music] Shadow one of his goals was to have a hunting chatow where the king could go with his ladies and his friends it was the king’s youth project he wanted to erect a charming and Splendid building here it wasn’t simply about building a place to live it was about creating a unique architectural work of art in order to build the shadow of his dreams the king stopped at nothing at vast expense he hired the greatest Genius of the Renaissance movement Leonardo da Vinci he invited him to France and offered him board and loding he had great admiration for this famous old man he called Leonardo da Vinci my father for Leonardo da Vinci this project would be seen as his last chance to prove his architectural talents at the time he was 66 years old and all his attempts had thus far resulted in Failure there were no architectural Pieces by Leonardo Leonardo had always throughout his life proposed extraordinary projects that were probably impossible to achieve because they were too ambitious for what was actually technically possible at the time coming to France was a way for Leonardo D Vinci to make his dream come true to finally Behold a real construction project a building that would no longer be on paper or parchment but actually exist in reality everything was in place to create an exceptional shadow [Music] and so began the pre-project meetings King Francis I first asked his team to think about the shatto’s architecture it was out of the question to use an existing building as inspiration he wanted this Royal building to take on a revolutionary form so what did the first sketches look like we’ve absolutely nothing we have absolutely no floor plans at all most of the documents regarding the construction of shambor were destroyed in the 18th century it’s a little disconcerting it’s as if someone wanted to make the plans disappear and perhaps maintain a sense of mystery around the Construction and design of shambour it wouldn’t be until 5 centuries later that the mystery of the missing plan unraveled a confusing yet ambitious flaw plan of an extraordinary construction project here is the first floor plan of Shambo what we now know is that this must have been a square building flanked by Four Towers with the living quarters in the corners that was all there was to this initial project it was a keep but an extraordinary one at that a huge keep measuring 2,000 square m and 56 M high but the most surprising thing about it was the organization of the spaces in a central plan a shatow in the form of a Greek cross which was unprecedented at the [Music] time dividing the internal space into the form of a Greek cross had never been done before it was the first time in France that a civil building or Chateau had used this layout in the 16th century Royal shatow were all designed based on the same model like the one used here for the shadow deua normally in shatow you walk into a courtyard you see a staircase which you climb to the first floor and there you’ll see a large room followed by the king’s living quarters quite unlike this Square structure cut into four by a cross where all the living quarters are identical including those of the king the king had no Suite of his own the King was in a very strange way on a Level Playing Field with other people the keeps as a place with no hierarchy were a remarkable space so whose idea was this architecture so totally Innovative at the time was this Leonardo da Vinci’s signature Leonardo da Vinci was obsessed with centralized and super symmetrical layouts and he used them very often it’s probably what he considered to be the perfect shape for a building the leading theory today is that King Francis I Incorporated the great Master’s recommendations but the Italian genius is believed to have hidden a coded message behind this design initially the building had a central symmetry in other words everything was organized around a central pivot they set out a building project that adhered to an unrivaled symmetry something that was completely unique absolutely unique and they had what’s known as a windmill layout the same piece can be turned a quarter turn four times and so the whole Shadow is taken like that in a great movement of rotation and Ascension so there’s really something there that reflects the spirit of the engineering behind it this idea of rotation is an architectural Hallmark of Leonardo da Vinci Leon Leonardo had always been fascinated by swirls anything that turns anything that spins and he’d find examples in nature like whirlpools and whirl winds what motivated and fascinated Leonardo da Vinci was perpetual motion there are indeed sketches that reflect this movement in the Codex [Music] atlanticus since he was if you like a master of all the Sciences to some extent he combined them all when it came to his architecture this extraordinary plan was approved by the king who was seduced by the Italian Master’s innovative ideas but one and by no means the least technical challenge remained Leonardo da Vinci may have designed it but they would still need to bring it to life how could you get the workmen to actually make this this became an even greater challenge since Leonardo da Vinci died on the 2nd of May 1519 at the age of 67 4 months before construction began his death did not stop the project going forward because King Francis had already decided that this Shadow would be built come may he put Leonardo D Vinci’s architectural plan into motion and so the builders had no idea of the scale of the task that awaited them on this extraordinary construction project on the 6th of September 1519 several 100 laborers arrived at the location the king had chosen for his chadow which was an awkward choice to say the least the name of the place was shambor a wild stretch of lowland isolated from everything in the Middle Ages palaces were normally built on Hills but here he’ chosen an area of Loland and in some notebooks berardo Da Vinci writes use lowlands for buildings because it creates a greater element of surprise because you’ll discover the building at the bend of a path King Francis the first knew this land well and he must have roamed across it while hunting deer so he bought the land to build the shambora estate King Francis the first saw things on a grand scale a very Grand scale the Shambo state is the same size as a small City 5,500 hectares with a 20m long wall which makes shambor the biggest enclosed estate in Europe it made for wonderful hunting [Music] territory but this location posed the Builder’s problems because it’s a very marshy area and some of the wetlands are still visible today my person personally I wouldn’t build a house on that kind of terrain no that would be technically impossible nowadays even at the planning stage they’d say well oh no no don’t go there evidence of this susceptibility to flooding arrived in 2016 following record rainfall leaving Shambo surrounded by water the idea of building in the middle of a marsh and even extending into the marsh itself was a way of demonstrating that it was possible to surmount the landscape and overcome natural elements shambour dipping its toes in the water was actually King France’s the First’s initial dream it’s 2.5 mil from the lir river and Francis the First’s intention which we know because of archives of orders he made and invoices for his orders was to divert the lair river which wasn’t far away and turn Shambo into an island an abandoned project that came to life 500 years later thanks to flooding but the shadow only narrowly escaped the water in 200 16 thanks to the exceptional quality of its foundations which had been built 5 centuries earlier Simon Bryant is an English engineer who specializes in excavation operations in the lair Valley chatau according to him the greatest challenge faced by the laborers was making sure the building didn’t collapse you have to find a base so that buildings with several stories and huge stonework just don’t collapse because small movements in the foundation even little compressions can sometimes have rather devastating consequences in the late 1990s Simon Bryant launched a huge excavation operation at shambour his aim was to understand how a shadow comprised of 220,000 tons of stone or the weight of three aircraft carriers was able to remain upright on unstable terrain so he started digging beneath the shadow when all of a sudden the scoop of his ex avator became blocked the scoop of an excavator hit on a hard surface oh well look at that there are walls here so we had to remove the water to clean up and that’s when we realized that this was the base of a medieval Tower he had found a medieval tower that had not previously been known about in this photo we can see part of its base so there was a smaller chadow in shambour that predated the one built by King Francis the first and the builders used it to support their new construction they saw that the medieval stonework was solid enough in that location and could be incorporated into the new construction like a foothold they tore down one Shadow left a few remnants of it and on top of that they built a new one but that wasn’t enough because the size of the Shadow King Francis I first had envisaged was much greater than that of the former Fortress and so a huge Landscaping project began 5,000 m cubed or the equivalent of two Olympic swimming pools were dug up in the hope of finding soil hard enough to build the foundations with they realized they gone beneath the Limestone so in places they dug as deep as 5.2 M or even deeper 5.2 M of stone foundation is quite extraordinary and so on top they built these wooden partitions like braided bits of mulch which they poured lime into and lime mixed with water holds firm so the more lime you add the more it hardens and then on top of that they gradually added Stones all the cut stone thus forming the base of the Shadow it wasn’t until 4 years after the project started that the foundations were actually finished four years of digging and compacting the soil before they could even start building the walls a Monumental task in addition the original teams assigned to manage all of this were all quite old died shortly afterwards and had to be replaced so there were there were some fairly complex setbacks for the project to begin with but the difficulties had only just begun for the Shambo laborers because it was now time for them to build the most architecturally important part of the Shadow the keep Central staircase whichever way you enter the building it’s the first thing you see it’s really magical it’s really a key structure it’s really a work of art within a work of art it was the first time someone had given so much importance to a staircase within a building a splendid staircase with a rare technical characteristic it’s a double helix in other words it’s made up of two 176 step spirals which sit one at top the other without ever merging it’s a bit like the structure of DNA for this construction project sculptors and stonemasons would be working on a double helix staircase of inordinate proportions it’s almost 9 m in diameter and over 20 M high it was the first time someone had made this kind of thing as incredible as it may seem the tools the builders used for the staircase were as basic as hammers calipers and ropes so how were they able to uce this architectural feat that Still Remains unparalleled to this day the first clue lies 12 mi from Shambo in King France’s I First’s First Shadow one of the main models for making this was a basic staircase the staircase in the chatow de bla this giant single Ascent staircase is very aesthetically similar to that of Shambo with its exposed banisters this is evidence of the inestimable expertise of the Region’s crafts people whom King Francis I first was relying on for the construction of his Masterpiece and it was certainly no coincidence that the master stonemason from blua was then sent to Shambo because it required a great technical Mastery particularly the way they grouted the stones and joined it all together which was no mean feet it was a lengthy endeavor each Stone had to be cut according to the drawings and the sketches in reality all the blocks were positioned perfectly and adjusted without joints it was completely transparent and so this means the workmanship is just phenomenal in order to truly appreciate the remarkable quality of this creation the Shambo staircase was scanned by a group of researchers in 2011 the staircase is B very nature extremely three-dimensional so a conceptual plan cannot do this staircase Justice the only way to represent it in a relevant way that can be significant enough for use in the future is to see it in 3D over 200 scans were required to reproduce the Shambo staircase in 3D and the result was astounding so you get a sense of the whole space and you can see through the material the digitalization then makes it possible to create a unique model of the staircase it’s the first and only model of its kind to my knowledge it’s the first time there’s been a 3D print of this level of quality from a laser scan of a staircase this big this model is proof of this staircases Perfection the demonstration is really all about the movement and realizing that you can unscrew screw it if it wasn’t perfect you wouldn’t be able to unscrew it so this movement isn’t possible unless the geometry is perfect I don’t think we could create something better even now it’s as simple as that even with our modern technology I don’t think we’d be capable of doing any [Music] better but one question remains regarding this architectural feat who was the designer Le Leonardo worked a lot on simple staircases double staircas triple staircases he was the multi- staircase specialist this theme kept rolling through his head and among the group who designed this extraordinary Chateau it absolutely had to have been Leonardo whose idea it was to give it several twists and also to place it in the middle of a building with a central plan 5 years after the work began King Fran’s the First’s dream started to take shape but a terrible event threatened the whole project in 1524 King Francis I went to wage war in Italy and was captured during the Battle of pava it was the equivalent of a World War at the [Music] time King Francis I was imprisoned in Spain thus th placing the continuation of the work on Shambo in danger so there was no money for Shambo and construction stopped for 2 years the project was placed on hold in October 1526 the King was finally liberated in exchange for his two sons he decided to resume construction of the chatau but there was one small problem he wanted to review the initial design and demanded modifications with which would ultimately have serious consequences when King Francis I first returned to France in 1526 shambour started changing shape in October 1526 they decided to expand Shao and to add to the existing keep which had been built up to the first floor and to add a whole system of walls with two Wings the Royal Wing on one side and the chapel wing on the other it would involve building an extra several thousand square meters a colossal task for the laborers I believe his State of Mind had changed and shambor now needed to be updated to reflect the life of a king who may have been young but was becoming increasingly king-like [Music] there was no way the king could be housed in the same keep as his court he wanted his Royal accommodation sheltered from View what he really wanted was to distinguish himself from the masses of courtiers who visited shamb B and no longer live in the keep moving into a wing would reaffirm his distinction with bigger living quarters that were different from the others I love this Royal Abode because on the first floor you have King Francis the First’s bedroom his living quarters and his chapel and then you go up a small Hidden Staircase to find the bedroom of the king’s mistress I love it because it’s spiritual pleasure and then caral pleasure how wonderful this Royal Wing proved to be a real brain teaser for the builders because they had to completely rethink the architecture of the keep in order to enable circulation between the keep and the Royal Wing they had to flip one of the corners otherwise you couldn’t get through you’d hit a wall so they decided to flip the corner in order to integrate a passage into one side a logier that linked to the Royal a reversal that made the project even more complicated Not only was he breaking from the original plan for the keep which had perfect geometry but he was also forcing them to modify some of the stonework that had already been built this is the case for the shadows’s latrines the septic tanks of that time they were formed of a double cesspit a big one and a small one connected by a pipe from the higher floors but it was impossible to preserve this system in the North Tower once it had been inverted in the North Tower since it had been necessary to invert the tower the pipe could no longer reach the small cesspit nor the big one so the men building Shambo had to change the structure of the cesspits in the North Tower as discovered by archaeologist Jean Silva Caillou and researcher Dominique ofpower there’s still water there yes it’s rather I’m not even sure we can get in [Music] there since the flooding in 2016 the cellers are often flooded Dominique offer Don a waterproof suit to show us the modifications made to the latrines by the Shambo stonemasons so here we’re in the latrines of the keep’s North Tower which is a system of latrines comprised of a small cesspit but this one is much longer than those of the other towers and then there’s a bigger cesspit which is much narrower behind this wall and what we’ve discovered through archaeological digs is that these two cesspits of different sizes are actually one big standard cesspit based on the same model as the others and they’ve been divided into two separate cesspits and our geophysical surveys have enabled us to establish that the small cesp was in fact built using the plan that respected the building Central Cemetery but through lack of usage it was backfilled and subsumed into the foundations this discovery has therefore irrefutably proved that this famous North Tower was indeed in converted in order to form a link with the Royal Wing and that’s not the only modification the king demanded of his teams when the building work resumed he added an external staircase which totally obstructed some of the existing Windows the gallery was built the fifth window was ready and perhaps the joiners were kept waiting and were about to fit them when unexpectedly the king decided to have a stone staircase built behind it so they completely walled up this window instead the king takes a decision that it gets done it’s like a permanent adjustment it’s a balancing act with the builders adapting to the Monarch’s every whim in some ways as the years went by this architectural dream turned into a nightmare delays were multiplying costs were going through the roof if we look at the years 1531 1533 and 1534 the most active years expenses were as high as 60,000 tour pounds that’s more than all the shatow and ongoing building projects in and around the capital at that time to put it into perspective a cathedral project back then would have cost around 5 or 6,000 tour pounds per year this one was 60,000 tour pounds per quarter the equivalent of hundreds of millions of euros staggering amounts taking on this project really became something of a financial drain and the costs grew heavier due to the horrendous conditions working on this Royal building project was hellish for the builders the surrounding swamp area brought with it its fair share of troubles such as Marsh fevers which people caught from mosquitoes in other words malaria killed a large number of workers other it is said were suffering from extreme fatigue and we know that King Francis the first was happy to reward his workers with additional bonuses so they be more inclined to work timelessly on the project often in danger of risking their life the greatest difficulty for the workers on this project was transporting raw materials shambor was in the middle of nowhere incoming materials had to pass through an obstacle course the Slate came from aner lead came from England and wood and blocks of stone came from T to travel distances of hundreds of miles the workers had but one [Music] solution was very difficult because at the time heavy goods were normally transported by river there were flat bottomed barges that traveled along the river and were generally pulled by horses these barges could carry car go weighing several tons but were very sensitive to bad weather it was slow they had to follow the path of the L fortunately winds came from the West which helped push the sails of these boats but when the wind stopped they couldn’t move forward and transportation became complicated it’s important to remember that the weather conditions were a lot more dramatic than they are today there are diaries telling us that the rivers froze over for a month or two thus rendering transportation by water impossible the journey was far from over because the boats were not able to dock directly up to shambour their Port of Entry was located 2.5 mi from the building site on the banks of the lair River the journey was completed by horse and carriage and cargo breakages cost them time at the time the roads were not paved and the carts would cross dirt paths with smaller loads so it took hundreds and hundreds of carts to transport these stones to the project the Shambo project was an unprecedented logical challenge it wasn’t just a small project with a few dozen workers it was now a huge building site 1,800 men worked on the project it was the first time this many Builders had worked on a single project the king’s in a hurry the king’s in a hurry he wants the beautiful chatau to shamb to be built as quickly as possible there was a huge amount of pressure on the workers there’s no doubt that labor laws were violated King Francis the first imposed a fine on the boatsman at the lair for failing to deliver the 20,000 stone blocks he’d ordered for not delivering them on time and the reason the King was so intransigent with this boatsman was that the delivery involved the most important raw material required for the construction of sham B to fux Stone it’s a very aesthetically pleasing Stone because it’s almost Pure White over the course of the project more than 220,000 tons were extracted from a 75 M underground Quarry in Trin it’s a stone with an incredible Advantage it’s very easy to sculpt it’s a stone that actually contains as much emptiness as it does matter half of its volume is air I don’t even need a hammer for this Stone because it’s really very tender so you can carve it straight away like a sculpture in other words you can actually use a tool to remove it without really hitting it hard because it’s very delicate it can be used for lots of things especially intricate decorations a characteristic the king particularly liked this twof of stone made it possible to reproduce What he’ seen in Italy these sculptures were possible all the Finesse of the Renaissance sculptures were possible thanks to this Stone which is very soft thanks to this twoo Stone there are 2,500 sculpted decorative pieces at Shambo these absolutely extraordinary Renaissance inspired decorative elements are extremely rare of the thousands of sculpted works of art one required a considerable effort it can be found at the top of the double helix staircase what’s particularly impressive is the Great Hall on the top floor of Shambo which is vaulted with very powerful very Italian style coffered vaults and the coffers are sculpted into King Francis the First’s emblems in each Coffer you’ll find either a salamander or an F in total there are almost 400 coffers there are around 200 fs and around 200 [Music] salamanders to create such an excessive Vault the builders had to erect a wood Wen scaffold a sort of casing once installed the sculptors place the coffers on top of one another starting from the bottom once the last stone called a keystone had been placed in the middle of the vaed ceiling the workers could remove the casing thanks to the Perfection of this construction these compressed Stones would hold themselves in place without any support you cannot remove any of the coffers in this vaulted ceiling everything is slotted into place this creation cannot be dismantled without the whole thing collapsing that’s what’s extraordinary about it this piece was built it’s here and it’s here to last as long as necessary but one strange Coffer attracts our attention could this Coffer contain a hidden message there’s an F on the voltage ceiling that’s strange because it’s been sculpted backwards of all the coffers in the space there’s only one that’s backwards so was this a joke on the part of the sculpture or is it a symbolic way of saying that the F we have above us is turned toward God rather than men it’s also maybe a way of saying that things can be read in both directions an inverted letter the same approach used by Leonardo da Vinci to record his research in his notebooks the famous codex Leonard Leonardo D Vinci actually had a rather spectacular writing style much like 15% of left-handed people he had a unique ability to right in Mirror was this King Francis the First’s way of paying tribute to the Italian genius it Still Remains a mystery to this day perhaps this backwards f is one of the symbols beyond our comprehension and we should either reinterpret or at least observe it in 1540 20 years after the building project started King Fran’s the First’s dream despite its ups and downs was gradually taking shape but the Sovereign fell ill having developed an infection his suffering grew worse would the king have enough time to see his Masterpiece completed a race against the clock began to finish the roof 20 M long frames had to be erected and the Slate needed to be placed on the roof the workers had to work together to build the roof Terrace of the keep all these big stone structures emerging from the rooftops are what we call Super structures huge chimneys webs of staircases sky really this whole structure looks like a city perched on top of a keep style shadow in the center of the 282 chimneys lies The Jewel of the Shadow the lantern Tower sitting at 56 M high and decorated with a crown and a giant 1.5 M Flur Elise up there at the top is the finest Royal Crown in other words the crown reserved for the Imperial leader that is to say the crown that represented the greatest power in the world at the time this Exquisite Tower weighs more than 40 tons or the equivalent of a military tank this weight in addition to the other superstructures required the construction of special walls that could support this excess weight some of the walls are almost 2 and 1/2 M thick you should see the walls at Shambo that absolutely huge but the greatest challenge of this Lantern Tower was its elevation how can you get 40 tons of stone 56 m in the air with Brute Force alone they know the weight they know the risk of crushing or something similar and any wooden scaffolds may just collapse yet again the laborers had to adapt their techniques to the excessiveness of the tower they used a simple but extremely effective tool the famous tread wheeel crane it had large Wheels in which a man or several men would pedal like hamsters if you will and could lift rocks and large stones to high altitudes using police system thanks to this ingenious system one man can lift an object much heavier than himself this was also a building site that helped Advance techniques based on studies that have been done one wheel could lift as much as 4 tons which is huge and the genius behind the Builders of Shambo didn’t stop there recently during the renovation Works carried out five centuries after its creation Shambo has revealed a previously incredibly well- hidden secret beneath the slabs of the roof Terrace hides a water drainage system designed to protect the building from bad weather further proof of the talent of The Architects of that that era the slabs aren’t watertight the water gets through and the problem is that the coford vaults are just below them as a solution to this they developed a hydraulic drainage system the likes of which had never before been seen in France the idea is that beneath the rooftop slabs the stone slabs there’s a real roof with tiles like this in a u shape which collects the penetrating water from the rooftop and drains them into two conduits at the base of the Vault which are slightly tilted outwards and then they link with the small lead channels towards the water spouts the construction of this chadow almost saw completion but everything stopped in March 1547 28 years after the project had begun King Francis the first died of septicemia at the age of 52 the king never lived to see his architectural Masterpiece completed OB tried to look into how much time King Francis the first spent at Shambo based on what we now know it was around 73 days the Shambo project lasted 28 years under King Francis I but the building wasn’t complete because the chapel Wing hadn’t been finished by the time King Francis I first died the enclosure around the courtyard had been started but not completed his son Henry II took over the project for a few years years but it was Lou the 14th the Sun King who added the final touch to this masterpiece this was around 1680 more than a century and a half after the project had begun Lou the 14th finished it respecting the overall design he didn’t add any barck Wings he did change the style of some of the windows but he was aware that he was in the presence of an incredible work of art in order to finish the work Louis the 14th brought in the best in the business he came with the Mastermind behind the Hall of Mirrors at Versa mansar at shambor jard Manar finished the work on the chapel he built the attic spaces at top the lower enclosure but the Sun King didn’t stop there he created a whole new backdrop for this unique Shadow Louis the 14th felt as though it wasn’t just the chapel and lower enclosure that were left unfinished the area immediately surrounding the Chateau was still a swamp I think they quite often found themselves traing in water and that didn’t suit the Sun King he decided to reproduce here what he’d successfully implemented at the palace of versailes a splendid French garden as revealed by the garden restoration work carried out in 2016 it would have been a Ty of struggle against the weather conditions in Shambo they needed to divert the Kau the waterway that meanders around the chatow this Garden was a Monumental construction project they made the decision to channel the C and divert it well away in order to do so they created artificial Moes and an artificial six hectare raised platform then they needed 15,000 little border plants and over 800 trees so this guy Garden was just further extravagance by creating this Splendid garden now restored Louis the 14th was honoring the spirit of his famous predecessor turning Shambo into a shadow for social occasions he invited molier there to put on his famous play Le [Music] but nowadays 500 years later Shambo is a giant mass of stone with Clay feet the famous tofall stone is being eaten away at by a mysterious disease here’s a bit that’s healthy which Sounds full when you knock here it sounds Hollow so this is where the crack has started spreading TFO is a soft Stone it’s a porous Stone and it absorbs water and then it dissolves and eventually Falls and if chunks of stone fall that can be extremely dangerous both to the public and to the building itself a few years ago a huge block of stone fell on The Terraces and fortunately did no harm but this does show how urgently shambo’s Stone disease must be diagnosed since 20 2011 the chatau has been granted an in-depth medical examination carried out by a team of scientific experts myself at shamb I’m like a stone doctor in other words at shamb I take samples like a blood sample you give it a hospital I then analyze the sample and identify the disease is it healthy are there pollutants involved is there something wrong with it if there’s something wrong with it where’s the problem using x-ray analysis of the samples and temperature sensors more than 14,000 stones at the shadow are being referenced and monitored on a permanent basis shambor is the only shadow in France with its own health record this health record lets us know whether the stone degradation is speeding up in certain places or whether we can actually wait a few years while we work on an area that requires more urgent attention [Music] faced with this danger and this disease eating away at the stone action had to be taken for several years now teams have been busy renovating this Shambo treasure and it’s a sizable challenge even just replacing a few Stones erecting a scaffold redoing a few sculptures can cost €2 million e in one go this masterpiece is now under strict surveillance and is still yet to reveal some of its secrets in recent years researchers may have uncovered new avenues to unravel the Mysteries behind the initial Shambo design an initial design that might not look the way we’d expected to until now we believed that the enclosure part wasn’t foreseen in the 1519 design but as it turns out we’re having doubts about that now perhaps it was foreseen but it would have been completely separate from the keep which would have been very distinct and separate from the enclosure it’s at 2.7 m in order to check this further excavations have been carried out in the Shadow’s moates in the hunt for remnants from the past and there are older pieces of stonework that could perhaps correspond to an extension of the lower enclosure where measuring them and then we’ll compare them with some of the designs to try and see whether we’re on the right track if this line of research proves true this could mean that the keep was never meant to stand alone but be surrounded by a huge Square enclosure an architectural design that’s reminiscent of certain religious texts the design with the courtyard and surrounding walls was used for the ideal city Heavenly Jerusalem in the apocalypse according to St John was King Francis I First’s much desired Shadow the shambor designed as a representation of God’s home on Earth what’s interesting about this hypothesis is the very mathematical interpretation of this new design of shambor in other words they have had this 3×3 grid with nine squares with a keep occupying the Central Square it was an extremely intellectual and mathematical design you can’t help but recognize the marks of one of the greatest Geniuses of all time Leonardo da Vinci he was convinced that the world was written in a mathematical language ultimately Sha’s a bit like a stone version of Leonardo D Vinci’s [Music] monaa almost two centuries of work technical Feats and Engineering genius helped this mesmerizing and Majestic Shadow rise from the ground a gargantuan project for a legendary Shadow if King France is the First’s aim was to Dazzle the world then he certainly succeeded [Music]