Short answers, pulled from the story.
Construction began on the 6th of September 1519 when Francis de Pontbriand received a direct order to start building. King Francis I of France commissioned this massive structure as a hunting lodge near his existing royal residences at Blois and Amboise.
The château contains 440 rooms, 282 fireplaces, and 84 staircases within its massive stone frame. A spectacular open double-spiral staircase serves as the centrepiece ascending three floors without ever meeting according to writer John Evelyn.
French kings abandoned the property for over eighty years allowing it to fall into decay until King Louis XIII gave the estate to his brother Gaston Duke of Orléans in 1639. Stanisław Leszczyński lived at the palace between 1725 and 1733 as deposed King of Poland while Maurice de Saxe installed his military regiment there after receiving the gift in 1745.
In 1792 the Revolutionary government ordered the sale of all furnishings inside the Château de Chambord including wall panellings and floors taken up to be sold for timber value. Panelled doors were burned to keep rooms warm during sales according to M de la Saussaye.
The château belonged to the French state since 1930 after legal battles concluded in 1932. In 1939 shortly before World War II began art collections from the Louvre and Compiègne museums including the Mona Lisa were stored at Chambord.