Must see attractions in Tours

This extraordinary museum – an absolute gem! – spotlights France's renowned compagnonnages, guild organisations of skilled craftspeople who have created everything from medieval cathedrals to the Statue of...

This superb fine-arts museum, in a gorgeous 18th-century archbishop’s palace, features paintings, sculpture, furniture and objets d'art from the 14th to 20th centuries. Highlights include paintings by Delacroix,...

With its flying buttresses, gargoyles and twin Renaissance-style towers (70m) – and, inside, Gothic vaulting, dazzling stained glass and huge baroque organ – this cathedral cuts a striking figure. Near the...

Founded in 1843, Tours' delightful 5-hectare botanical gardens have a tropical greenhouse, a medicinal herb garden, a small zoo and children's playgrounds. Situated 2km west of place Jean Jaurès, the gardens are...

Hidden behind an Italianate façade, this gorgeous early-Renaissance residence – visible through a stone gate – was built for a wealthy merchant around 1510. The courtyard is home to a Calder mobile. The interior...

In the Middle Ages, Tours was an important pilgrimage city thanks to the relics of soldier-turned-evangelist St Martin (c 317–97). In the 5th century a basilica was constructed above his tomb; in the 13th century...

This cloister, built from 1442 to 1524 – that's why it's partly Flamboyant Gothic and party Renaissance – is located on the north side of the Cathédrale St-Gatien. It once served as a scriptorium (for the copying...

Built from 1896 to 1904, Tours' monumental city hall was designed to project both republican values and municipal prestige.

One of the last vestiges of Tours' 13th-century, Romanesque Basilique St-Martin.

A vestige of Tours' 13th-century, Romanesque Basilique St-Martin.

Built in the 1840s, Tours' neoclassical courthouse has an imposing colonnade facing place Jean Jaurès.

Most of this Gothic church, once part of a Benedictine abbey, dates from the mid-1200s.