Chambord The Leonardo Da Vinci Mystery
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00:00Chateau de Chambord, the jewel of the French Renaissance.
00:09Situated 110 miles south of Paris, lost in the middle of a forest, is one of the most
00:14impressive chateaux in the Loire Valley.
00:16Its outline is enthralling, its extravagance is overwhelming.
00:21With a 156-meter facade, this chateau has more than 400 rooms, 77 staircases and 282
00:27chimneys.
00:28Chambord isn't a chateau, it's a masterpiece.
00:32Surrounded by a 5,500-hectare park, the equivalent of a small city, this chateau's design is
00:39still a thing of wonder five centuries later.
00:44How were they able to achieve something so perfect in the 16th century?
00:51We're going to talk you through this incredible project which required monumental resources
00:55in the 16th century.
00:581,800 workmen worked on this project over the years.
01:01It was an exceptional project.
01:04What technical feats did these builders accomplish at the time in order to put together these
01:08revolutionary structures?
01:11This piece cannot be dismantled without the whole thing breaking, that's what's exceptional
01:15about it.
01:16We are dealing with something completely unique.
01:18From the monumental central staircase, to the thousands of sculptures, to the hundreds
01:23of chimneys that sit atop the building, what challenges had to be overcome in order to
01:29satisfy the every whim of the chateau's commissioner, King Francis I?
01:35The king takes a decision and it gets done.
01:37Taking on this project really became something of a financial drain.
01:42A project that also holds the story of a mystery that's never been solved.
01:47We have absolutely no floor plans at all.
01:49Why does the shadow of Leonardo da Vinci, the greatest genius of the Renaissance, loom
01:53across the Chateau de Chambord?
01:55He called Leonardo da Vinci my father.
01:59He was in awe of this illustrious old man.
02:03Using new 3D animation software, we'll roll back the clock and explore the timeline of
02:07this incredible structure, unique in its time.
02:10I don't think we could create something better, even now.
02:13Accounts from the best specialists will reveal the construction secrets behind this stone
02:17giant.
02:19Now kept under very tight surveillance.
02:24500 years after its construction, the secrets behind the Chateau de Chambord are finally
02:28being revealed.
02:38The Chateau de Chambord looks like no other royal building in the world.
02:43That's what has made it such a popular attraction.
02:48Each year, almost one million visitors come to roam through the corridors of this distinctive
02:53chateau.
02:55As you walk in, you feel like you're getting lost in a maze.
03:01On each floor, you have to go to the windows and look outside and think, OK, I'm on this
03:06side now.
03:07Otherwise, you lose your bearings.
03:10It's a chateau that's very hard to fully conjure up in your mind.
03:16It houses 440 rooms, some of which have six meter high ceilings.
03:22It has 77 staircases, more than the Palace of Versailles, and its corridors are as long
03:27as an airliner.
03:28This chateau is a giant architectural treasure hunt.
03:34The sheer size and organization of Chambord pose a challenge.
03:38Chambord is a cryptic message.
03:42With its non-standard dimensions, it was able to conceal some of the Louvre's greatest
03:46works of art during the Second World War, including the famous Mona Lisa.
03:54It was like Ali Baba's caves with boxes wherever you looked.
03:563,000 to 4,000 crates were stored in Chambord.
04:00At one point, Chambord had 4,000 cubed meters of works of art, statues and crates.
04:07However, this chateau, featured on the UNESCO World Heritage List, very nearly never came
04:12into existence.
04:17While it was being built, nobody believed such a project was possible.
04:22No one, except one man.
04:31The year is 1518, here in the Loire Valley city of Blois, the home of the new King of
04:38France.
04:40Francis I is only 24 years old, and he's already the most powerful king in Europe.
04:47Francis I, in 1515, was a feisty young man.
04:50He was an ambitious king, a strategic king, and a visionary too.
04:55We know his aim was to somehow become the emperor of Europe.
05:01In 1515, King Francis I had conquered the Swiss in Marignano.
05:05So this young man, who wasn't necessarily supposed to ascend the throne, suddenly had
05:10everything.
05:14To demonstrate his power, King Francis I wanted to build things and mark his own era.
05:19Very quickly, he launched a huge construction program.
05:24He was a construction king.
05:26He's one of the great historic builders.
05:28And when he walked into his chateau, he'd draw sketches of what he'd done and what he
05:32wanted to do.
05:33And I imagine he'd have been an architect, had he not been king.
05:37Over the course of his reign, he built 12 chateaux, more than any other king.
05:41But King Francis I wanted to go even further.
05:47And in 1518, he decided to invent a new type of chateau.
05:54One of his goals was to have a hunting chateau where the king could go with his ladies and
06:00his friends.
06:01It was the king's youth project.
06:05He wanted to erect a charming and splendid building here.
06:08It wasn't simply about building a place to live.
06:11It was about creating a unique architectural work of art.
06:16In order to build the chateau of his dreams, the king stopped at nothing.
06:20At vast expense, he hired the greatest genius of the Renaissance movement, Leonardo da Vinci.
06:27He invited him to France and offered him board and lodging.
06:31He had great admiration for this famous old man.
06:35He called Leonardo da Vinci my father.
06:40For Leonardo da Vinci, this project would be seen as his last chance to prove his architectural
06:45talents.
06:46At the time, he was 66 years old, and all his attempts had thus far resulted in failure.
06:53There were no architectural pieces by Leonardo.
06:56Leonardo had always, throughout his life, proposed extraordinary projects that were
07:01probably impossible to achieve because they were too ambitious for what was actually technically
07:06possible at the time.
07:10Coming to France was a way for Leonardo da Vinci to make his dream come true, to finally
07:15behold a real construction project, a building that would no longer be on paper or parchment,
07:20but actually exist in reality.
07:24Everything was in place to create an exceptional chateau.
07:31And so began the pre-project meetings.
07:34King Francis I asked his team to think about the chateau's architecture.
07:40It was out of the question to use an existing building as inspiration.
07:44He wanted this royal building to take on a revolutionary form.
07:49So what did the first sketches look like?
07:52We have absolutely nothing.
07:54We have absolutely no floor plans at all.
07:57Most of the documents regarding the construction of Chambord were destroyed in the 18th century.
08:03It's a little disconcerting.
08:05It's as if someone wanted to make the plans disappear, and perhaps maintain a sense of
08:09mystery around the construction and design of Chambord.
08:14It wouldn't be until five centuries later that the mystery of the missing plan unravelled,
08:19a confusing yet ambitious floor plan of an extraordinary construction project.
08:26Here is the first floor plan of Chambord.
08:31What we now know is that this must have been a square building, flanked by four towers,
08:36with the living quarters in the corners.
08:39That was all there was to this initial project.
08:41It was a keep, but an extraordinary one at that.
08:45A huge keep, measuring 2,000 square metres and 56 metres high.
08:51But the most surprising thing about it was the organisation of the spaces in a central
08:57plan, a chateau in the form of a Greek cross, which was unprecedented at the time.
09:07Placing the internal space into the form of a Greek cross had never been done before.
09:12It was the first time in France that a civil building, or chateau, had used this layout.
09:18In the 16th century, royal chateaux were all designed based on the same model, like the
09:24one used here for the Chateau de Blois.
09:27Normally in a chateau, you walk into a courtyard, you see a staircase, which you climb to the
09:33first floor, and there you'll see a large room, followed by the king's living quarters.
09:40Quite unlike this square structure cut into four by a cross, where all the living quarters
09:45are identical, including those of the king.
09:49The king had no suite of his own.
09:52The king was, in a very strange way, on a level playing field with other people.
10:01The keeps, as a place with no hierarchy, were a remarkable space.
10:09So whose idea was this architecture, so totally innovative at the time?
10:16Was this Leonardo da Vinci's signature?
10:21Leonardo da Vinci was obsessed with centralised and super-symmetrical layouts, and he used
10:26them very often.
10:28It's probably what he'd consider to be the perfect shape for a building.
10:32The leading theory today is that King Francis I incorporated the great master's recommendations.
10:39But the Italian genius is believed to have hidden a coded message behind this design.
10:46Initially the building had a central symmetry, in other words, everything was organised around
10:50a central pivot.
10:52They set out a building project that adhered to an unrivalled symmetry, something that
10:56was completely unique.
11:00And they had what's known as a windmill layout.
11:03The same piece can be turned a quarter turn four times.
11:07And so the whole chateau is taken like that, in a great movement of rotation and ascension.
11:13So there's really something there that reflects the spirit of the engineering behind it.
11:19This idea of rotation is an architectural hallmark of Leonardo da Vinci's.
11:27Leonardo had always been fascinated by swirls, anything that turns, anything that spins.
11:35And he'd find examples in nature, like whirlpools and whirlwinds.
11:42What motivated and fascinated Leonardo da Vinci was perpetual motion.
11:48There are indeed sketches that reflect this movement in the Codex Atlanticus.
11:56Since he was, if you like, a master of all the sciences, to some extent he combined them
12:02all when it came to his architecture.
12:06This extraordinary plan was approved by the king, who was seduced by the Italian master's
12:11innovative ideas.
12:12But one, and by no means the least, technical challenge remained.
12:18Leonardo da Vinci may have designed it, but they would still need to bring it to life.
12:22How could you get the workmen to actually make this?
12:27This became an even greater challenge since Leonardo da Vinci died on the 2nd of May,
12:331519, at the age of 67, four months before construction began.
12:41His death did not stop the project going forward, because King Francis had already decided that
12:46the chateau would be built come what may.
12:48He put Leonardo da Vinci's architectural plan into motion.
12:53And so the builders had no idea of the scale of the task that awaited them on this extraordinary
12:58construction project.
13:04On the 6th of September, 1519, several hundred labourers arrived at the location the king
13:09had chosen for his chateau, which was an awkward choice, to say the least.
13:14The name of the place was Chambord, a wild stretch of lowland, isolated from everything.
13:21In the Middle Ages, palaces were normally built on hills, but here he'd chosen an area
13:26of lowland.
13:27And in some notebooks, Leonardo da Vinci writes, use lowlands for buildings, because it creates
13:32a greater element of surprise, because you'll discover the building at the bend of a path.
13:38King Francis I knew this land well, and he must have roamed across it while hunting deer.
13:43So he bought the land to build the Chambord estate.
13:46King Francis I saw things on a grand scale, a very grand scale.
13:51The Chambord estate is the same size as a small city, 5,500 hectares with a 20 mile
13:58long wall, which makes Chambord the biggest enclosed estate in Europe.
14:03It made for wonderful hunting territory.
14:10But this location posed the builders problems, because it's a very marshy area, and some
14:18of the wetlands are still visible today.
14:20Personally, I wouldn't build a house on that kind of terrain.
14:25No, that would be technically impossible nowadays.
14:27Even at the planning stage, they'd say, whoa, no, no, don't go there.
14:31Evidence of this susceptibility to flooding arrived in 2016, following record rainfall,
14:38leaving Chambord surrounded by water.
14:42The idea of building in the middle of a marsh and even extending into the marsh itself was
14:46a way of demonstrating that it was possible to surmount the landscape and overcome natural
14:51elements.
14:52Chambord dipping its toes in the water was actually King Francis I's initial dream.
15:00It's 2.5 miles from the Loire River, and Francis I's intention, which we know because of archives
15:06of orders he made and invoices for his orders, was to divert the Loire River, which wasn't
15:11far away, and turn Chambord into an island.
15:15An abandoned project that came to life 500 years later, thanks to flooding.
15:25But the chateau only narrowly escaped the water in 2016, thanks to the exceptional quality
15:31of its foundations, which had been built five centuries earlier.
15:38Simon Bryant is an English engineer who specializes in excavation operations in the Loire Valley
15:44Chateau.
15:45According to him, the greatest challenge faced by the labourers was making sure the building
15:50didn't collapse.
15:51You have to find a base so that buildings with several storeys and huge stonework just
15:56don't collapse, because small movements in the foundations, even little compressions,
16:00can sometimes have rather devastating consequences.
16:06In the late 1990s, Simon Bryant launched a huge excavation operation at Chambord.
16:11His aim was to understand how a chateau comprised of 220,000 tonnes of stone, or the weight
16:18of three aircraft carriers, was able to remain upright on unstable terrain.
16:24So he started digging beneath the chateau, when all of a sudden the scoop of his excavator
16:29became blocked.
16:32The scoop of an excavator hit on a hard surface.
16:35Oh, well, look at that.
16:37There are walls here.
16:38So we had to remove the wall to clean up, and that's when we realized that this was
16:41the base of a medieval tower.
16:46He had found a medieval tower that had not previously been known about.
16:50In this photo we can see part of its base.
16:53So there was a smaller chateau in Chambord that predated the one built by King Francis
16:58I, and the builders used it to support their new construction.
17:04They saw that the medieval stonework was solid enough in that location and could be incorporated
17:09into the new construction, like a foothold.
17:14They tore down one chateau, left a few remnants of it, and on top of that, they built a new
17:19one.
17:20But that wasn't enough, because the size of the chateau King Francis I had envisaged was
17:25much greater than that of the former fortress.
17:28And so a huge landscaping project began.
17:315,000 meters cubed, or the equivalent of two Olympic swimming pools, were dug up in the
17:36hope of finding soil hard enough to build the foundations with.
17:40They realized they'd gone beneath the limestone, so in places they dug as deep as 5.2 meters,
17:46or even deeper.
17:475.2 meters of stone foundation is quite extraordinary.
17:51So on top, they built these wooden partitions, like braided bits of mulch, which they poured
17:56lime into.
17:57And lime mixed with water holds firm, so the more lime you add, the more it hardens.
18:02And then on top of that, they gradually added stones, all the cut stone, thus forming the
18:07base of the chateau.
18:11It wasn't until four years after the project started that the foundations were actually
18:15finished.
18:17Four years of digging and compacting the soil before they could even start building the
18:21walls.
18:22A monumental task.
18:25In addition, the original teams assigned to manage all of this were all quite old, died
18:30shortly afterwards and had to be replaced, so there were some fairly complex setbacks
18:35for the project to begin with.
18:39But the difficulties had only just begun for the Chambord laborers.
18:43Because it was now time for them to build the most architecturally important part of
18:47the chateau.
18:48The keep's central staircase.
18:53Whichever way you enter the building, it's the first thing you see.
18:56It's really magical.
18:58It's really a key structure.
18:59It's really a work of art within a work of art.
19:03It was the first time someone had given so much importance to a staircase within a building.
19:10A splendid staircase with a rare technical characteristic.
19:15It's a double helix.
19:17In other words, it's made up of two 176-step spirals, which sit one atop the other, without
19:24ever merging.
19:28It's a bit like the structure of DNA.
19:30For this construction project, sculptors and stonemasons would be working on a double helix
19:35staircase of inordinate proportions.
19:40It's almost nine meters in diameter and over 20 meters high.
19:43It was the first time someone had made this kind of thing.
19:47As incredible as it may seem, the tools the builders used for the staircase were as basic
19:53as hammers, calipers and ropes.
19:57So how were they able to produce this architectural feat that still remains unparalleled to this
20:03day?
20:04The first clue lies 12 miles from Chambord, in King Francis I's first chateau.
20:11One of the main models for making this was a basic staircase, the staircase in the Chateau
20:17de Blois.
20:19This giant single-ascent staircase is very aesthetically similar to that of Chambord,
20:24with its exposed banisters.
20:26This is evidence of the inestimable expertise of the region's craftspeople, whom King Francis
20:32I was relying on for the construction of his masterpiece.
20:39And it was certainly no coincidence that the master stonemason from Blois was then sent
20:44to Chambord, because it required a great technical mastery, particularly the way they grouted
20:50the stones and joined it all together, which was no mean feat.
20:56It was a lengthy endeavor.
20:59Each stone had to be cut according to the drawings and the sketches.
21:04In reality, all the blocks were positioned perfectly and adjusted without joints.
21:09It was completely transparent, and so this means the workmanship is just phenomenal.
21:18In order to truly appreciate the remarkable quality of this creation, the Chambord staircase
21:23was scanned by a group of researchers in 2011.
21:27The staircase is by its very nature extremely three-dimensional, so a conceptual plan cannot
21:32do this staircase justice.
21:34The only way to represent it in a relevant way that can be significant enough for use
21:38in the future is to see it in 3D.
21:43Over 200 scans were required to reproduce the Chambord staircase in 3D, and the result
21:51was astounding.
21:53So you get a sense of the whole space and you can see through the material.
21:59The digitalization then makes it possible to create a unique model of the staircase.
22:06It's the first and only model of its kind.
22:10To my knowledge, it's the first time there's been a 3D print of this level of quality from
22:15a laser scan of a staircase this big.
22:19This model is proof of this staircase's perfection.
22:24The demonstration is really all about the movement and realizing that you can unscrew
22:28it.
22:29If it wasn't perfect, you wouldn't be able to unscrew it.
22:31So this movement isn't possible unless the geometry is perfect.
22:34I don't think we could create something better, even now.
22:37It's as simple as that.
22:38Even with our modern technology, I don't think we'd be capable of doing any better.
22:43But one question remains regarding this architectural feat.
22:48Who was the designer?
22:54Leonardo worked a lot on simple staircases, double staircases, triple staircases.
23:01He was the multi-staircase specialist.
23:06This theme kept rolling through his head and among the group who designed this extraordinary
23:12chateau.
23:13It absolutely had to have been Leonardo, whose idea it was to give it several twists and
23:21also to place it in the middle of a building with a central plan.
23:28Five years after the work began, King Francis I's dream started to take shape.
23:34But a terrible event threatened the whole project.
23:38In 1524, King Francis I went to wage war in Italy and was captured during the Battle of
23:46Pavia.
23:47It was the equivalent of a world war at the time.
23:55King Francis I was imprisoned in Spain, thus placing the continuation of the work on Chambord
24:01in danger.
24:02So there was no money for Chambord and construction stopped.
24:07For two years, the project was placed on hold.
24:12In October 1526, the king was finally liberated in exchange for his two sons.
24:18He decided to resume construction of the chateau.
24:22But there was one small problem.
24:24He wanted to review the initial design and demanded modifications, which would ultimately
24:29have serious consequences.
24:33When King Francis I returned to France in 1526, Chambord started changing shape.
24:41In October 1526, they decided to expand Chambord and to add to the existing keep, which had
24:47been built up to the first floor, and to add a whole system of walls with two wings, the
24:53royal wing on one side and the chapel wing on the other.
24:58It would involve building an extra several thousand square metres, a colossal task for
25:03the labourers.
25:07I believe his state of mind had changed and Chambord now needed to be updated to reflect
25:12the life of a king, who may have been young but was becoming increasingly king-like.
25:21There was no way the king could be housed in the same keep as his court.
25:25He wanted his royal accommodation sheltered from view.
25:30What he really wanted was to distinguish himself from the masses of courtiers who visited Chambord
25:35and no longer live in the keep.
25:37Moving into a wing would reaffirm his distinction with bigger living quarters that were different
25:40from the others.
25:42I love this royal abode because on the first floor you have King Francis I's bedroom, his
25:48living quarters and his chapel.
25:50And then you go up a small hidden staircase to find the bedroom of the king's mistress.
25:56I love it because it's spiritual pleasure and then carnal pleasure.
26:00How wonderful!
26:02This royal wing proved to be a real brain-teaser for the builders, because they had to completely
26:08rethink the architecture of the keep.
26:12In order to enable circulation between the keep and the royal wing, they had to flip
26:16one of the corners, otherwise you couldn't get through, you'd hit a wall.
26:21So they decided to flip the corner in order to integrate a passage into one side, a loggia
26:27that linked to the royal wing.
26:31A reversal that made the project even more complicated.
26:35Not only was he breaking from the original plan for the keep, which had perfect geometry,
26:41but he was also forcing them to modify some of the stonework that had already been built.
26:48This is the case for the chateau's latrines, the septic tanks of that time.
26:55They were formed of a double cesspit, a big one and a small one, connected by a pipe from
27:00the higher floors.
27:03But it was impossible to preserve this system in the north tower, once it had been inverted.
27:10In the north tower, since it had been necessary to invert the tower, the pipe could no longer
27:15reach the small cesspit, nor the big one.
27:19So the men building Chambord had to change the structure of the cesspits in the north
27:23tower, as discovered by archaeologist Jean-Sylvain Caillou and researcher Dominique Offbauer.
27:32There's still water there.
27:35Yes, it's rather...
27:36I'm not even sure we can get in there.
27:43Since the flooding in 2016, the cellars are often flooded.
27:48Dominique Offbauer dons a waterproof suit to show us the modifications made to the latrines
27:54by the Chambord stonemasons.
27:59So, here we're in the latrines of the keep's north tower, which is a system of latrines
28:04comprised of a small cesspit, but this one is much longer than those of the other towers.
28:10And then there's a bigger cesspit, which is much narrower behind this wall.
28:16And what we've discovered through archaeological digs is that these two cesspits of different
28:21sizes are actually one big standard cesspit, based on the same model as the others, and
28:27they've been divided into two separate cesspits.
28:32And our geophysical surveys have enabled us to establish that the small cesspit was, in
28:37fact, built using the plan that respected the building's central cemetery.
28:43But through lack of usage, it was backfilled and subsumed into the foundations.
28:50This discovery has therefore irrefutably proved that this famous north tower was indeed inverted
28:56in order to form a link with the royal wing.
29:02And that's not the only modification the king demanded of his teams.
29:05When the building work resumed, he added an external staircase, which totally obstructed
29:12some of the existing windows.
29:16The gallery was built, the fifth window was ready, and perhaps the joiners were kept waiting
29:20and were about to fit them when, unexpectedly, the king decided to have a stone staircase
29:25built behind it.
29:27So they completely walled up this window instead.
29:32The king takes a decision and it gets done.
29:35It's like a permanent adjustment.
29:38It's a balancing act, with the builders adapting to the monarch's every whim, in some ways.
29:45As the years went by, this architectural dream turned into a nightmare.
29:50Delays were multiplying, costs were going through the roof.
29:56If we look at the years 1531, 1533 and 1534, the most active years, expenses were as high
30:03as 60,000 tour pounds.
30:04That's more than all the chateaux and ongoing building projects in and around the capital
30:09at that time.
30:11To put it into perspective, a cathedral project back then would have cost around 5 or 6,000
30:17tour pounds per year.
30:18This one was 60,000 tour pounds per quarter.
30:23The equivalent of hundreds of millions of euros, staggering amounts.
30:30Taking on this project really became something of a financial drain.
30:35And the costs grew heavier due to the horrendous conditions.
30:41Working on this royal building project was hellish for the builders.
30:46The surrounding swamp area brought with it its fair share of troubles, such as marsh
30:50fevers, which people caught from mosquitoes.
30:53In other words, malaria killed a large number of workers.
30:55Others, it is said, were suffering from extreme fatigue.
30:59And we know that King Francis I was happy to reward his workers with additional bonuses
31:04so they'd be more inclined to work tirelessly on the project, often in danger of risking
31:09their life.
31:12The greatest difficulty for the workers on this project was transporting raw materials.
31:17Chambord was in the middle of nowhere.
31:20Incoming materials had to pass through an obstacle course.
31:23The slate came from Angers, lead came from England, and wooden blocks of stone came from
31:30Tours.
31:32To travel distances of hundreds of miles, the workers had but one solution.
31:39It was very difficult because, at the time, heavy goods were normally transported by river.
31:47There were flat-bottomed barges that travelled along the river and were generally pulled
31:51by horses.
31:54These barges could carry cargo weighing several tons, but were very sensitive to bad weather.
32:01It was slow.
32:02They had to follow the path of the Loire.
32:04Fortunately, winds came from the west, which helped push the sails of these boats.
32:07But when the wind stopped, they couldn't move forward, and transportation became complicated.
32:13It's important to remember that the weather conditions were a lot more dramatic than they
32:18are today.
32:19There are diaries telling us that the rivers froze over for a month or two, thus rendering
32:25transportation by water impossible.
32:30The journey was far from over because the boats were not able to dock directly up to
32:35Chambord.
32:37Their port of entry was located 2.5 miles from the building site, on the banks of the
32:42Loire River.
32:43The journey was completed by horse and carriage, and cargo breakages cost them time.
32:50At the time, the roads were not paved, and the carts would cross dirt paths with smaller
32:56loads.
32:58So it took hundreds and hundreds of carts to transport these stones to the project.
33:05The Chambord project was an unprecedented logical challenge.
33:10It wasn't just a small project with a few dozen workers.
33:13It was now a huge building site.
33:161,800 men worked on the project.
33:18It was the first time this many builders had worked on a single project.
33:22The king's in a hurry.
33:23The king's in a hurry.
33:24He wants the beautiful Chateau de Chambord to be built as quickly as possible.
33:29There was a huge amount of pressure on the workers.
33:32There's no doubt that labor laws were violated.
33:38King Francis I imposed a fine on the boatsman at the Loire for failing to deliver the 20,000
33:43stone blocks he'd ordered, for not delivering them on time.
33:47And the reason the king was so intransigent with this boatsman was that the delivery involved
33:52the most important raw material required for the construction of Chambord, Tufau stone.
34:00It's a very aesthetically pleasing stone because it's almost pure white.
34:06Over the course of the project, more than 220,000 tons were extracted from a 75-mile
34:12underground quarry in Turin.
34:16It's a stone with an incredible advantage.
34:19It's very easy to sculpt.
34:22It's a stone that actually contains as much emptiness as it does matter.
34:25Half of its volume is air.
34:26I don't even need a hammer for this stone because it's really very tender, so you can
34:30carve it straight away, like a sculpture.
34:33In other words, you can actually use a tool to remove it without really hitting it hard.
34:37Because it's very delicate, it can be used for lots of things, especially intricate decorations.
34:43A characteristic the king particularly liked.
34:48This Tufau stone made it possible to reproduce what he'd seen in Italy.
34:52These sculptures were possible.
34:53All the finesse of the Renaissance sculptures were possible thanks to this stone, which
34:56is very soft.
34:58Thanks to this Tufau stone, there are 2,500 sculpted decorative pieces at Chambord.
35:04These absolutely extraordinary Renaissance-inspired decorative elements are extremely rare.
35:12Of the thousands of sculpted works of art, one required a considerable effort.
35:17It can be found at the top of the double helix staircase.
35:22What's particularly impressive is the great hall on the top floor of Chambord, which is
35:27vaulted with very powerful, very Italian-style coffered vaults.
35:33And the coffers are sculpted into King Francis I's emblems.
35:38In each coffer, you'll find either a salamander or an F. In total, there are almost 400 coffers.
35:44There are around 200 Fs and around 200 salamanders.
35:52To create such an excessive vault, the builders had to erect a wooden scaffold, a sort of casing.
36:00Once installed, the sculptors placed the coffers on top of one another, starting from the bottom.
36:07Once the last stone, called a keystone, had been placed in the middle of the vaulted ceiling,
36:13the workers could remove the casing.
36:16Thanks to the perfection of this construction, these compressed stones would hold themselves
36:21in place without any support.
36:25You cannot remove any of the coffers in this vaulted ceiling.
36:28Everything is slotted into place.
36:30This creation cannot be dismantled without the whole thing collapsing.
36:34That's what's extraordinary about it.
36:35This piece was built, it's here, and it's here to last as long as necessary.
36:40But one strange coffer attracts our attention.
36:43Could this coffer contain a hidden message?
36:49There's an F on the vaulted ceiling that's strange because it's been sculpted backwards.
36:53Of all the coffers in the space, there's only one that's backwards.
36:57So was this a joke on the part of the sculptor, or is it a symbolic way of saying that the F
37:02we have above us is turned toward God rather than men?
37:07It's also maybe a way of saying that things can be read in both directions.
37:12Leonardo da Vinci actually had a rather spectacular writing style.
37:18Much like 15% of left-handed people, he had a unique ability to write in mirror.
37:27Was this King Francis I's way of paying tribute to the Italians?
37:33Perhaps this backwards F is one of the symbols beyond our comprehension,
37:37and we should either reinterpret or at least observe it.
37:43In 1540, 20 years after the building project started,
37:47King Francis I was asked to build a new building.
37:50He was asked to build a new building.
37:52He was asked to build a new building.
37:54He was asked to build a new building.
37:56He was asked to build a new building.
37:58He was asked to build a new building.
38:0020 years after the building project started,
38:03King Francis I's dream, despite its ups and downs, was gradually taking shape.
38:09But the sovereign fell ill.
38:11Having developed an infection, his suffering grew worse.
38:16Would the king have enough time to see his masterpiece completed?
38:22A race against the clock began to finish the roof.
38:2620 meter long frames had to be erected.
38:31And the slate needed to be placed on the roof.
38:35The workers had to work together to build the roof terrace of the keep.
38:43All these big stone structures emerging from the rooftops are what we call superstructures.
38:51Huge chimneys, webs of staircases, skylights.
38:54Really, this whole structure looks like a city perched on top of a keep-style château.
39:00In the center of the 282 chimneys lies the jewel of the château,
39:05the lantern tower, sitting at 56 meters high
39:09and decorated with a crown and a giant 1.5 meter fleur-de-lis.
39:16Up there, at the top, is the finest royal crown.
39:19In other words, the crown reserved for the imperial leader.
39:23That is to say, the crown that represented the greatest power in the world at the time.
39:29This exquisite tower weighs more than 40 tons, or the equivalent of a military tank.
39:35This weight, in addition to the other superstructures,
39:39required the construction of special walls that could support this excess weight.
39:48Some of the walls are almost 2.5 meters thick.
39:51You should see the walls at Chambord. They're absolutely huge.
39:57But the greatest challenge of this lantern tower was its elevation.
40:02How can you get 40 tons of stone 56 meters in the air with brute force alone?
40:08They know the weight, they know the risk of crushing or something similar,
40:12and any wooden scaffolds may just collapse.
40:16Yet again, the laborers had to adapt their techniques to the excessiveness of the tower.
40:20They used a simple but extremely effective tool, the famous treadwheel crane.
40:26It had large wheels in which a man, or several men, would pedal like hamsters, if you will,
40:33and could lift rocks and large stones to high altitudes using a pulley system.
40:41Thanks to this ingenious system, one man can lift an object much heavier than himself.
40:47This was also a building site that helped advance techniques.
40:51Based on studies that have been done, one wheel could lift as much as four tons, which is huge.
40:57And the genius behind the builders of Chambord didn't stop there.
41:02Recently, during the renovation works carried out five centuries after its creation,
41:07Chambord has revealed a previously incredibly well-hidden secret.
41:12Beneath the slabs of the roof terrace hides a water drainage system,
41:16designed to protect the building from bad weather.
41:20Further proof of the talent of the architects of that era.
41:25The slabs aren't watertight, the water gets through,
41:28and the problem is that the coffered vaults are just below them.
41:31As a solution to this, they developed a hydraulic drainage system,
41:35the likes of which had never before been seen in France.
41:39The idea is that beneath the rooftop slabs, the stone slabs,
41:43there's a real roof with tiles like this, in a U-shape,
41:47which collects the penetrating water from the rooftop
41:50and drains them into two conduits at the base of the vault,
41:53which are slightly tilted outwards,
41:56and then they link with the small lead channels towards the water spouts.
42:01The construction of this chateau almost saw completion,
42:05but everything stopped in March 1547,
42:0828 years after the project had begun.
42:11King Francis I died of septicemia at the age of 52.
42:17The king never lived to see his architectural masterpiece completed.
42:23We've obviously tried to look into how much time King Francis I spent at Chambord.
42:28Based on what we now know, it was around 73 days.
42:33The Chambord project lasted 28 years under King Francis I,
42:37but the building wasn't complete because the chapel wing hadn't been finished
42:41by the time King Francis I died.
42:44The enclosure around the courtyard had been started but not completed.
42:49His son, Henry II, took over the project for a few years.
42:55But it was Louis XIV, the Sun King,
42:58who added the final touch to this masterpiece.
43:01This was around 1680, more than a century and a half after the project had begun.
43:09Louis XIV finished it, respecting the overall design.
43:13He didn't add any baroque wings.
43:15He did change the style of some of the windows,
43:18but he was aware that he was in the presence of an incredible work of art.
43:22In order to finish the work, Louis XIV brought in the best in the business.
43:27He came with the mastermind behind the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, Jules-Ardoin Mansart.
43:32At Chambord, Jules-Ardoin Mansart finished the work on the chapel.
43:36He built the attic spaces atop the lower enclosure.
43:43But the Sun King didn't stop there.
43:45He created a whole new backdrop for this unique chateau.
43:50Louis XIV felt as though it wasn't just the chapel and lower enclosure that were left unfinished.
43:56The area immediately surrounding the chateau was still a swamp.
44:01I think they quite often found themselves traipsing in water.
44:05And that didn't suit the Sun King.
44:08He decided to reproduce here what he'd successfully implemented at the Palace of Versailles,
44:13a splendid French garden.
44:16As revealed by the garden restoration work carried out in 2016,
44:21it would have been a tireless struggle against the weather conditions in Chambord.
44:25They needed to divert the Cosson, the waterway that meanders around the chateau.
44:31This garden was a monumental construction project.
44:35They made the decision to channel the Cosson and divert it well away.
44:39In order to do so, they created artificial moats and an artificial six hectare raised platform.
44:47Then they needed 15,000 little border plants and over 800 trees.
44:52So this garden was just further extravagance.
44:59By creating this splendid garden, now restored,
45:02Louis XIV was honouring the spirit of his famous predecessor,
45:06turning Chambord into a chateau for social occasions.
45:11He invited Molière there to put on his famous play, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.
45:23But nowadays, 500 years later, Chambord is a giant mass of stone with clay feet.
45:31The famous two-four stone is being eaten away at by a mysterious disease.
45:39Here's a bit that's healthy, which sounds full when you knock here.
45:45It sounds hollow, so this is where the crack has started spreading.
45:50Two-four is a soft stone, it's a porous stone and it absorbs water.
45:55And then it dissolves and eventually falls.
45:58And if chunks of stone fall, that can be extremely dangerous,
46:02both to the public and to the building itself.
46:06A few years ago, a huge block of stone fell on the terraces and fortunately did no harm.
46:12But this does show how urgently Chambord's stone disease must be diagnosed.
46:18Since 2011, the chateau has been granted an in-depth medical examination,
46:23carried out by a team of scientific experts.
46:28Myself, at Chambord, I'm like a stone doctor.
46:31In other words, at Chambord, I take samples, like a blood sample,
46:35and give it to a hospital.
46:37I then analyse the sample and identify the disease.
46:40Is it healthy? Are there pollutants involved?
46:43Is there something wrong with it?
46:45If there's something wrong with it, where's the problem?
46:49Using X-ray analysis of the samples and temperature sensors,
46:53more than 14,000 stones at the chateau are being referenced and monitored on a permanent basis.
47:00Chambord is the only chateau in the world with a stone disease.
47:05Chambord is the only chateau in France with its own health record.
47:11This health record lets us know whether the stone degradation is speeding up in certain places,
47:16or whether we can actually wait a few years while we work on an area that requires more urgent attention.
47:26Faced with this danger and this disease eating away at the stone, action had to be taken.
47:32For several years now, teams have been busy renovating this Chambord treasure.
47:37And it's a sizeable challenge.
47:40Even just replacing a few stones, erecting a scaffold, redoing a few sculptures,
47:45can cost 2 million euros in one go.
47:48This masterpiece is now under strict surveillance and is still yet to reveal some of its secrets.
47:54In recent years, researchers may have uncovered new avenues to unravel the mysteries behind the initial Chambord design.
48:03An initial design that might not look the way we'd expect it to.
48:08Until now, we believed that the enclosure part wasn't foreseen in the 1519 design.
48:13But as it turns out, we're having doubts about that now.
48:16Perhaps it was foreseen, but it would have been completely separate from the keep,
48:20which would have been very distinct and separate from the enclosure.
48:24It's at 2.7 metres.
48:27In order to check this, further excavations have been carried out in the chateau's moats,
48:31in the hunt for remnants from the past.
48:35And there are older pieces of stonework that could perhaps correspond to an extension of the lower enclosure.
48:43We're measuring them, and then we'll compare them with some of the designs to try and see whether we're on the right track.
48:53If this line of research proves true, this could mean that the keep was never meant to stand alone,
48:59but be surrounded by a huge square enclosure.
49:04An architectural design that's reminiscent of certain religious texts.
49:08The design with the courtyard and surrounding walls was used for the ideal city.
49:14Heavenly Jerusalem in the apocalypse, according to Saint John.
49:19Was King Francis I's much-desired Chateau de Chambord designed as a representation of God's home on Earth?
49:28What's interesting about this hypothesis is the very mathematical interpretation of the design.
49:35In other words, they'd have had this three-by-three grid with nine squares, with the keep occupying the central square.
49:43It was an extremely intellectual and mathematical design.
49:48You can't help but recognize the marks of one of the greatest geniuses of all time, Leonardo da Vinci.
49:55He was convinced that the world was written in a mathematical language.
49:59Ultimately, Chambord was a bit like a stone version of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa.
50:07Almost two centuries of work, technical feats, and engineering genius
50:12helped this mesmerizing and majestic chateau rise from the ashes.
50:17Almost two centuries of work, technical feats, and engineering genius
50:21helped this mesmerizing and majestic chateau rise from the ashes.
50:25A gargantuan project for a legendary chateau.
50:29If King Francis I's aim was to dazzle the world, then he certainly succeeded.
50:47If King Francis I's aim was to dazzle the world, then he certainly succeeded.