Tours, a cathedral city situated in the Loire Valley, is situated on a spit of land between the rivers Loire and Cher, and has a vibrant nightlife, with plenty of bars and restaurants. There is also a variety of unusual museums including wine, crafts, stained glass and a good Beaux-Arts museum. The city has a number of fine looking buildings, including the St-Gatien cathedral.

There are two distinct quarters of the city which lie either side of the Rue Nationale, which is a buzzing retail area. The quieter centre part surrounds the cathedral, whilst in contrast the main tourist hub lies around Plumereau, about 600m west.

Tours is also the main transport link to the great châteaux of Villandry, Langeais, Azay-le-Rideau and Amboise.

Getting there

Tours is on one of the main lines of the TGV, and as a result, the west coast of France at Bordeaux can be reached in just two and a half hours. From there you can travel to the Mediterranean coast via Avignon and from there to Spain and Barcelona, or to Lyon, Strasbourg and Lille. Paris is one hour away by TGV, and Charles de Gaulle airport can be reached in an hour and a half.

Tours has two main stations: the central station Gare de Tours, and Gare de Saint-Pierre-des-Corps, just outside the centre, the station used by trains that do not terminate in Tours.

Tours Loire Valley Airport connects the Loire Valley to London Stansted Airport, Marseille and Porto. Scheduled flights to Dublin and Manchester as well as charter flights to Ajaccio and Figari are also available during the summer.

Early records suggest that the Turones (a Gallic tribal group) settled on the right bank of the River Loire. In the first century AD the Romans moved the settlement across the river and called it Caesarodunum, but from the 5th century it was known as Civitas Turonorum. In the mid-3rd century, the area was evangelised and the community remained small until the second half of the 4th century, when St. Martin, the great apostle of the Gauls, was persuaded to become their bishop. A magnificent basilica was raised above his tomb in the late 5th century, and for hundreds of years it attracted pilgrims to Tours.

Tours continued to uphold its prosperity in the Middle Ages in spite of participation in the conflict between the French and English kings in the 12th century and afterwards during the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453). In 1462, Louis XI established a civic council and a silk industry that flourished for more than a century. However, the mass departure of Huguenots (a Protestant group) after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) caused industrial decline. During the French Revolution of the late 18th century, the town was a base for operations against the royalist Vendée rebels. During the Second World War, the French government had its headquarters in Tours from June 13 to 15, 1940, and Winston Churchill met French premier Paul Reynaud there in an unsuccessful attempt to dissuade France from negotiating an armistice with Germany. In the 1944 bombardments that preceded the German retreat and the liberation, led to one-fourth of the city being destroyed.