Tours (Turones in Latin — the ancient capital of the Turones Gallic tribe; population 138,000 city, 310,000 metropolitan area) is the capital of the Indre-et-Loire department and the gateway city to the Loire Valley (UNESCO World Heritage 2000 — "the cultural landscape of the Loire Valley"), the most celebrated landscape of French châteaux and royal gardens. Tours is on the Loire River 235 km southwest of Paris (1h from Paris on the TGV), at the confluence of the Loire and Cher rivers. The city is the commercial and service centre of the Loire Valley château region: the most visited châteaux within day-trip distance of Tours include the Château de Chambord (51 km northeast — the largest château in the Loire Valley, built by François I 1519-1547; the double-helix staircase attributed (without conclusive evidence) to Leonardo da Vinci), the Château de Chenonceau (34 km east — the château spanning the Cher River on stone arches; the most visited château in France after Versailles; built and enlarged by a series of women owners — Catherine Briçonnet, Diane de Poitiers, Catherine de Médicis; the "château des dames"), the Château d'Amboise (25 km east — where Leonardo da Vinci lived his last three years (1516-1519) and is buried in the Chapel of Saint-Hubert on the château terrace), and the Château de Villandry (16 km west — the famous Renaissance gardens (the jardin d'ornement with the topiary and the parterre in the classic French formal garden style; the kitchen garden (potager) arranged in geometric beds of vegetables and flowers)). Tours itself has the finest medieval and Renaissance urban fabric in the Loire Valley: the Place Plumereau (the 15th-century timber-framed market square — the finest ensemble of medieval half-timbered buildings in the Loire Valley), the Saint-Gatien Cathedral (the Gothic cathedral begun 1170 with the finest Flamboyant Gothic facade in the Loire Valley and the Renaissance lantern towers), and the Basilica of Saint-Martin (Tours was one of the most important pilgrimage destinations in medieval Europe as the city of Saint Martin of Tours (316/317-397 CE) — the Roman soldier-turned-bishop who is the patron saint of France and whose shrine attracted millions of pilgrims on the Via Turonensis (the Tours route of the Camino de Santiago)).
Place Plumereau ("Plum" to the Tourangeaux — the 15th-century market square at the heart of the Vieux-Tours (old town) neighbourhood; the finest ensemble of medieval timber-framed buildings in the Loire Valley: the square is completely surrounded by the 15th-16th century half-timbered houses (the maisons à colombages — the timber-frame construction with the exposed vertical and diagonal wooden structural members and the infill panels of brick, plaster or wattle-and-daub); the square was the medieval cloth and butter market of Tours (the "place des changes" — the money-changers' square); the surrounding streets (the Rue de la Victoire, the Rue Briçonnet, the Rue du Grand-Marché): the most concentrated medieval streetscape in Tours — the streets have preserved the 15th-century building plots and the timber-framed facades that fire destroyed in most other French cities; the Rue Briçonnet (the most photographed street in Tours — the row of Renaissance townhouses (the Hôtel Gouin, the Hôtel Beaune-Semblançay) with the early Italian Renaissance ornament applied to the French vernacular building types); the Square des Corps Nus (the small square with the 19th-century statue of the "naked bodies" — the fountain sculpture that shocked Victorian Tours).
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideCathédrale Saint-Gatien de Tours (the Gothic cathedral dedicated to Saint Gatianus, the first bishop of Tours (3rd century CE); construction began in 1170 and was not completed until 1547 — the 377-year construction period makes it one of the longest construction projects in French cathedral history (only Paris Notre-Dame (182 years) and Amiens (68 years) are comparable among the major French Gothic cathedrals in the time required); the facade (the most complex Flamboyant Gothic facade in the Loire Valley — the three portals with the carved tympana, the window rose above the central portal, and the two towers with the distinctive Renaissance lanterns added to the Gothic tower bases in 1507-1547 (the Renaissance additions by the Bishop Martin de Beaune created the unique Flamboyant-Renaissance hybrid that defines the Tours cathedral silhouette)); the stained glass (the finest medieval stained glass collection in the Loire Valley: the 13th-century windows in the choir (the Chartres-school windows depicting the lives of the apostles) and the 15th-century Flamboyant windows in the nave transepts); the cloître de la Psalette (the Renaissance cloister adjacent to the north tower — the most elegant small cloister in the Loire Valley, with the delicate arcading and the wall paintings of the 16th century school of the Loire).
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideChâteau de Chenonceau (34 km east of Tours — 40 min by car or bus; the most visited château in the Loire Valley and the second-most visited in France (after Versailles) with 900,000 visitors annually; the château that is literally built over the River Cher — the main building sits on the foundation of a 16th-century mill in the river bed; the bridge-gallery spanning the river (the famous 60-metre gallery spanning the Cher on five arches was built 1556-1559 by Philibert de l'Orme for Diane de Poitiers and completed for Catherine de Médicis after Henri II's death in 1559; the gallery is 6 metres wide and 60 metres long with 18 windows overlooking both the upstream and downstream Cher views — the most photographed architectural space in the Loire Valley); the women's history (Chenonceau is the "Château des Dames" — built and enlarged by a series of female owners: Katherine Briçonnet (1513-1521, first builder); Diane de Poitiers (1547-1559, the river bridge and the formal garden); Catherine de Médicis (1559-1589, the gallery and the second garden); Louise de Lorraine (1589-1601, who painted her mourning room entirely black and white after her husband Henri III was assassinated)); the moat gardens (the formal garden of Diane de Poitiers and the garden of Catherine de Médicis on opposite sides of the castle).
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideTouraine evening (the wine and food culture of the Loire Valley): the Vouvray wine (the Vouvray AOC — the white wine appellation on the hillside east of Tours (the tufa limestone slopes of the Vouvray village on the north bank of the Loire); the grape: Chenin Blanc (the dominant white grape of the Loire Valley — the most versatile white grape in French viticulture; the Vouvray Chenin Blanc can be made dry (sec), off-dry (demi-sec), sweet (moelleux), or sparkling (mousseux or pétillant); the dry Vouvray has the characteristic honey-and-quince aroma with the high natural acidity that allows it to age for 20-30+ years); the rillettes de Tours (the most famous speciality of Tours: the slow-cooked pork spread (the rillettes are made by slow-cooking cubed pork belly and shoulder in their own fat with the bouquet garni and the white wine for 4-6 hours, then shredding the meat into the cooking fat — the result is the coarse-textured pork spread that is the Tourangeau version of the Sarthe rillettes; the Tours rillettes are darker and coarser than the Le Mans version); the rillons (the caramelised pork belly pieces — the Touraine regional meat snack).
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideChâteau de Chambord (51 km northeast of Tours — 1h by car; the largest château in the Loire Valley and one of the most extraordinary buildings in the French Renaissance; UNESCO World Heritage; built by François I between 1519 and 1547 as a royal hunting lodge (though at 426 rooms it is the largest hunting lodge ever built — the ostentation was clearly the point; the château was used by the king for only 72 nights in total during his lifetime; a building project that consumed 20,000 workers and 13 million francs (approximately €1.5 billion in modern terms)); the architecture: 440 rooms, 365 fireplaces (one for each day of the year, though this was a 19th-century addition to the myth), 83 staircases; the roofscape (the most complex roofline in French architecture: the forest of towers, lanterns, dormers and chimneys on the Chambord rooftop — the rooftop terrace was designed as the king's private outdoor reception space (the hunting parties would watch the hunt from the terrace, the dogs and horses far below in the forest); the double-helix staircase (the famous central staircase of Chambord — the two intertwined helical staircases that allow two people to ascend and descend simultaneously without ever seeing each other; the attribution to Leonardo da Vinci (who was living at the Château d'Amboise during the first years of Chambord's design and who left sketchbooks with double-spiral staircase studies) remains debated by architectural historians).
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideChâteau d'Amboise (25 km east of Tours — 30 min by car or train; the royal château on the cliff above the Loire in the town of Amboise; the château where François I was raised and where Leonardo da Vinci spent his last three years (1516-1519); the Leonardo connection: in 1516, François I invited Leonardo da Vinci (then 63 years old) to come to France as the "First Painter, Engineer and Architect of the King" — the invitation that brought the most famous single art commission in history (the Mona Lisa) to France permanently (the Mona Lisa had been painted in Florence 1503-1506 and was in Leonardo's personal possession; it came to France with Leonardo in 1516 and was purchased by François I; it has never left France since); Leonardo lived at the Clos Lucé manor house (200 m from the château) until his death on May 2, 1519; he is buried in the Chapel of Saint-Hubert on the Amboise château terrace (the exact location of his remains is uncertain — the chapel was destroyed during the Revolution and rebuilt in the 19th century; bones believed to be Leonardo's were found in 2010 and are commemorated in the rebuilt chapel); the château view (the finest view of the Loire Valley from the Amboise terrace — the Loire with the islands and sandbanks, the Touraine plateau and the vineyards).
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideClos Lucé (the Château du Clos Lucé — the manor house in Amboise where Leonardo da Vinci lived 1516-1519 and died; the house was given to Leonardo by François I with an annual stipend of 700 écus (a king's salary by contemporary standards) and the specific instruction that Leonardo was to think and create as he wished — the earliest example of a European head of state funding a genius as artist-in-residence without specific commissions; the Leonardo exhibitions (the Clos Lucé houses the most comprehensive exhibition on Leonardo's engineering and scientific work (outside the Vinci birthplace museum in Tuscany): the full-size working models of Leonardo's inventions constructed from his notebook drawings — the flying machine (the ornithopter based on the bird wing study notebooks), the armoured vehicle (the "tank" design from the 1487 letter to Lodovico Sforza), the solar power concentrator (the parabolic mirror array), the hydraulic machine designs; the gardens (the Clos Lucé gardens have been reconstructed with the plants Leonardo is documented to have cultivated)); the Francesco Melzi connection (Leonardo's last pupil and companion in France).
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideDinner in Amboise (the most characterful restaurant town in the Loire Valley — the smaller scale of Amboise compared to Tours means the restaurants are more personal and the local specialities are more visible): the Touraine classic menu (the terrine de porc aux herbes (the cold herbed pork terrine with the cornichons — the Touraine charcuterie tradition is one of the finest in France); the sandre au beurre blanc (the Loire pike-perch (sandre) fillets in the beurre blanc sauce — the definitive Loire Valley fish dish; the beurre blanc (the emulsified butter sauce made with white wine, shallots and lemon juice) was invented in the Loire Valley around 1890 and remains the sauce that defines Loire Valley cuisine); the Chinon wine (the red wine AOC from the Vienne valley 45 km west of Tours — the Cabernet Franc grape grown on the tufa limestone and gravels of the Vienne produces the most elegant red wine in the Loire Valley; the Chinon rouge has the distinctive violet and raspberry aromas of Loire Cabernet Franc with the mineral chalky finish that the tufa soils impart); return to Tours by train (20 min from Amboise to Tours Saint-Pierre-des-Corps, then 5 min shuttle to Tours centre).
Château de Villandry (16 km west of Tours — 20 min by car or 1h by bicycle along the Loire cycle path; the last great château built in the Loire Valley during the Renaissance (built 1536 by Jean le Breton (the Finance Minister of François I) on the site of a 12th-century fortified house; the château itself is less remarkable than its gardens — the most famous formal gardens in France outside Versailles); the gardens (three terraces of gardens: the highest level — the water garden (the ornamental basin reflecting the château); the middle level — the ornamental garden (the jardin d'ornement: four parterres of box hedges clipped in the symbolic patterns of love (tender love, passionate love, fickle love and tragic love — the heart, dagger and fan shapes cut in the box hedge and filled with flowers)); the lowest level — the kitchen garden (the potager du roi: the most famous kitchen garden in France, with 9 geometrically arranged squares of vegetables and ornamental plants in the medieval monastery garden tradition — the combinations of cabbages, leeks, chard, artichokes and tomatoes are chosen as much for their visual colour patterns as for their culinary use; the garden requires 40,000 vegetable plants and 52,000 flower plants to replant 5 times annually)).
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideChâteau d'Azay-le-Rideau (26 km southwest of Tours — 30 min by car or train; UNESCO World Heritage; built 1518-1527 on a small island in the Indre River (the Indre was diverted to create the moat around the island; the château sits on a platform of oak piles driven into the riverbed); the most elegantly proportioned Renaissance château in the Loire Valley (the Italian Renaissance influence is most pure at Azay-le-Rideau — the horizontal string courses dividing the levels, the mullioned windows in their Renaissance frames, the corner staircase tower with the sculpted loggia (the loggia is the Italian element that makes Azay-le-Rideau the most Italianate of the Loire châteaux)); the history: the château was built by the financier Gilles Berthelot (the Treasurer-General of France) for his wife Philippa Lesbahy; the château was completed in 1527 but Berthelot was implicated in embezzlement charges (probably politically motivated) and fled to Italy, leaving the unfinished château to be confiscated by François I; the interior (the 16th-century furnishings, the Gobelin tapestries (the 16th-17th century tapestries with the hunting and mythological scenes), the Renaissance kitchen (the largest and most complete 16th-century kitchen surviving in any Loire château)); the Indre River setting (the reflection of the château in the perfectly still Indre water is the most reproduced image of the Loire Valley after Chenonceau).
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideTouraine wine route (the afternoon wine exploration of the Loire Valley's red wine appellations): Chinon (the medieval fortress town on the Vienne River (the citadel of Chinon where Joan of Arc first met the Dauphin Charles VII in 1429 and identified him among the disguised courtiers — the moment that launched the French military recovery in the Hundred Years' War); the Chinon AOC (the Cabernet Franc red wine from the tufa limestone and river gravel terroirs — the tuffeau soils produce the most mineral and elegant Cabernet Franc in the world; the Domaine Philippe Alliet and the Domaine Bernard Baudry are among the finest producers); Bourgueil (the Cabernet Franc AOC on the north bank of the Loire, 30 km west of Tours — the gravelly terraces of the Loire produce a fuller, riper style of Cabernet Franc than Chinon; the Domaine Pierre-Jacques Druet and the Pierre Caslot are the reference producers); the tufa wine caves (the remarkable underground wine caves of the Loire Valley carved into the tufa limestone cliff faces — the cave-dwelling troglodyte communities of the Loire used the same tufa cliffs for both housing and wine storage; the cave-cellar tours at the local wine domaines offer the most atmospheric wine tasting in France).
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideFinal evening in Tours (the most gastronomically sophisticated small city in France per capita — the Touraine table reflects the Loire Valley's position as the kitchen garden of France and the royal hunting ground of the French monarchy): the dinner menu structure (the classic Touraine restaurant menu: the amuse-bouche (a small toast with rillettes or a rillon (the caramelised pork belly); the starter (a terrine or the pressed foie gras with the Vouvray demi-sec jelly); the fish course (the Loire sandre au beurre blanc or the Loire salmon with the sorrel sauce — the oseille (sorrel) is the most distinctive herb of the Loire Valley cuisine); the meat course (the pintade rôtie (roast guinea fowl — the signature poultry of the Touraine farms — with the morel mushroom sauce); the cheese (the Sainte-Maure-de-Touraine (the log-shaped goat cheese of the Touraine (PDO designation) rolled in ash with the straw through the centre)); the tarte Tatin (the caramelised upside-down apple tart — invented in the 1880s at the Hôtel Tatin in Lamotte-Beuvron (60 km south of Tours); the most famous French dessert accident: the Tatin sisters accidentally baked the tart upside-down and served it rather than waste the caramelised apples — the most delicious culinary mistake in French history).