Tours packs an Old Master collection, a Portuguese-designed contemporary art centre and a museum of journeyman masterpieces into ten walkable minutes. Three days of galleries, glass, guilds and live stages along the Loire.
The former Archbishop's Palace holds Mantegna's Christ in the Garden of Olives, Rembrandt's Flight into Egypt, Degas and Delacroix across 12 period rooms. A cedar of Lebanon planted in 1804 fills the courtyard.
The Hôtel Goüin's carved Italianate facade of 1510 survived the 1940 bombing that flattened the street around it. Rue du Commerce and Rue Briçonnet still string together merchant houses from the 12th to 18th centuries.
Opened 2017 in a concrete-and-glass building by Aires Mateus, wrapped around an 18th-century facade. Two vast halls show commissioned installations plus the Debré collection, including his monumental theatre curtains.
Gemmail — layered coloured glass lit from behind, invented in Tours in the 1930s — gets its only dedicated museum here, in the vaulted cellars of Hôtel Raimbault. Picasso, Braque and Rouault works were translated into the technique.
Above the cloister of Saint-Julien abbey, 500 masterpieces made by journeymen to earn their guild title: spiral staircases in miniature, a locksmith's puzzle chest, sugar architecture by pastry compagnons. Unique in France.
The street that escaped wartime bombing now runs on bouquinistes, print dealers and small galleries between half-timbered houses. Number 8 bears the plaque marking the armourer who fitted Joan of Arc in 1429.
What remains of the royal castle — two towers and a 15th-century logis on the Loire embankment — is programmed by the Paris Jeu de Paume with photography retrospectives, two or three shows a year across three floors.
An 1872 Italian-style horseshoe with 1,000 seats, painted ceiling and its own opera company and orchestra. The season runs September to June: opera, ballet and symphonic concerts, with Théâtre Olympia round the corner for drama.
The Pléiade poet Ronsard was prior here from 1565 until his death in 1585 and is buried in the ruined church. His lodging survives intact, surrounded by 700 rose varieties and a garden replanted to his verses.
The covered market of 1980 replaced an 1865 iron hall on the same site: 45 stalls of Sainte-Maure goat cheese, rillons, Touraine asparagus and river fish. Busiest Saturday and Sunday morning, closed Monday afternoons.
Victor Laloux's neo-Byzantine basilica of 1902 covers Saint Martin's tomb in the crypt. Two towers from the vanished medieval collegiate church still stand in the streets nearby; the small museum explains what was lost.
On the sandbank below Pont Wilson, the summer guinguette runs concerts, DJ sets, tango and swing lessons on wooden decking at the water's edge, roughly May to September, with local growers pouring by the glass.