What to See at the Château de Chambord, Floor by Floor

More than 60 rooms, three floors of the keep, a roof you can walk on and a wing you cannot. Here is the route in the order you walk it, what is closed this year, and how long to give each part — plus the tickets and guided visits at Chambord that walk it with you.

The ground floor: where the visit starts

You enter through the court and meet the double helix staircase almost at once, rising from the centre of the keep. Before you climb, find the audiovisual room on the ground floor: a 20-minute film on the building and its history plays on a loop, with subtitles. It is the best twenty minutes you can spend before the rooms make sense.

The ground floor is also the step-free part of the château, reached by a ramp into the keep.

The first floor: the apartments of later residents

François I spent only about fifty days here in all, so the rooms you see were furnished by the people who came after him. Louis XIV created a new state apartment at the centre of the keep in 1680. Maurice de Saxe modernised it with luxurious furnishing in the 1740s. The Count of Chambord, in the 19th century, gathered family portraits and royalist gifts to show the first visitors.

The estate calls this a documented refurnishing rather than a reconstruction: pieces on deposit from Versailles, the Mobilier national and the Musée des Arts décoratifs, arranged to show how the rooms were used. Look for the tapestries, one of the finest collections in France.

The court and the two wings

The keep stands inside a walled court, and two wings run off it: the royal wing to the east and the chapel wing to the west. You reach them from the court by the open corner staircases, or along the galleries that link them to the keep on each floor. The low buildings that close the court once hid the kitchens and later housed the servants; their 17th-century attics were taken off in the 1930s to bring back the Renaissance outline.

This year the royal wing is the part you cannot enter. The chapel wing, roofed at last under Louis XIV, is on the route.

The second floor: the vaults, the children’s rooms and the Festins

The cross-shaped rooms on the second floor are covered by long carved vaults, with François I’s crowned F and his salamander repeated hundreds of times. This is the floor where the architecture becomes the exhibit. Maurice de Saxe had a theatre built up here in the 18th century.

From 26 September 2026 to 24 January 2027 the château hosts Les Festins de Chambord, four reconstructed feasts from 1539 to 1988, included in your ticket. The exhibitions page has the detail.

The terraces: up among the chimneys

The staircase carries on to the roof. Walk out onto the terraces and you are among the chimneys, turrets and dormers that make Chambord’s silhouette, with the lantern tower rising above the stair at the centre. On a clear day you look down the long avenues into the forest.

The terraces are also the way into Chambord, 1939–1945, a permanent display on the years the château sheltered the Louvre’s evacuated collections.

What is closed during your visit

More than 60 rooms remain open, and the keep, the staircase, the vaults and the terraces — the parts people come for — are all on the route.

The HistoPad: 16 stations and nine reconstructions

The HistoPad is a tablet you rent for €6.50, rebuilt for 2026. François I narrates, and at each of 16 stations from the ground floor to the second you can open a 3D reconstruction of the room as it was, nine in all. It runs in twelve languages and carries more than an hour and a half of audio.

Families get a treasure hunt and a costume selfie. Visitors with reduced mobility get a version that shows every stage of the visit from the ground floor.

Le logis des enfants

On the second floor of the keep, in the François I tower, is a space built for children: sixteen hands-on activities, sound experiments, touch screens and a quiet corner for the youngest. It is open every day from 10:00 to 13:00 and 14:00 to 17:30, free with your ticket, from age three, in French and English. If you are visiting with children, plan your route around it.

Where to eat during the visit

You do not have to leave to eat. Le Café d’Orléans, inside the château, serves lunch made with produce from the estate and the surrounding area. Autour du Puits, at the foot of the château, sells sweet and savoury food to take away. The restaurants and shops on Place Saint-Louis stay open all year, and there are picnic tables by the car parks if you bring your own.

How long to allow, floor by floor

Last entry is 30 minutes before closing, so arrive with at least two hours in hand if you want the terraces.

Where to check these figures

Every figure above comes from the Domaine national de Chambord’s own published pages, listed below. Hours and rates move, so check yours before you travel.

• Visiting the château
• HistoPad visit guide
• Exceptional room closures
• Save the François I wing
• For children