Top things to do 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 intimate restaurant, with just a dozen tables, garners rave reviews for its outstanding traditional French cuisine, prepared à l'ancienne (in the old style, like your grandmother would have). Each dish –...

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...

Relaxed but refined, this French restaurant garners consistently excellent reviews for its steak and its Touraine specialities, including beuchelle à la tourangelle (calf sweetbreads and kidneys combined with...

Using Touraine-grown products and spices that chef David Bironneau brings back in his suitcase from faraway lands, this restaurant serves French cuisine that's as contemporary as its violet-and-aubergine colour...

Fresh, seasonal products are judiciously combined here to produce superb French dishes, a few of them inspired by the culinary traditions of southern France and Asia. The house speciality is sandre (pikeperch)...

Acclaimed by locals as one of Tours' best purveyors of savoury buckwheat galettes, sweet crêpes, and cidre (apple cider; €3.50/8 per glass/pitcher) from Normandy and Brittany, this restaurant also serves creative...

The French cuisine here, served in bright, contemporary rooms, is infused with inspiration asiatique (inspiration from Asia). Chef Julien Perrodin's focus is on fish, and seafood brought in fresh from Cancale and...

An underground (literally) nightspot where DJs (every night) and bands (about one Thursday or Friday a month, starting between 7.30pm and 8.30pm) quake the cellar walls with pop and rock, and students as well as...

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...

This genuinely Irish pub – the owner hails from the Emerald Isle – is hugely popular with both locals and students from English-speaking lands. Has 18 beers on tap, 40 whiskies, darts and, every Thursday or...

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...

This is Tours' 'gastronomic heart'. Market stalls – 38 of them – sell everything you could want for a picnic, including fine cheese, wine and prepared dishes.

This impressive Italianate theatre building, opened in 1889, hosts operas, symphonies, chamber music and other concerts.

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 snazzy little cafe serves tartines (toasted open-face sandwiches) made with scrumptious pain Poilâne (artisanal bread), amid classic rock and friendly chatter. Toppings include smoked duck breast,...

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.