The Château de Chambord is a building with a long and complicated history, such that you would expect from any French château. This is just one of the many Châteaux I’ve visited as I traveled around France this year.

They’re all beautiful, yet at the same time, I can’t help but feel they’re also monuments to mankind’s selfishness and our stupidity. Beautiful palaces like this one symbolize the disparity of wealth that France saw between its working folk and the aristocracy. It was a vast chasm of a wealth gap and gave rise to the revolution.

We no longer build such palaces in the countryside. However, as I’ve looked upon these beautiful Châteaux, I wonder if perhaps the towering skyscrapers that reach for the heavens in cities across the world today, are in fact just modern versions of these vast palaces that were built to impress.

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Stand here using Google street view.