Tours

Places researched in this city

A selection of the 35 places we've researched in this city. The full set is in the Parroo app.

• Gothic cathedral
• Renaissance châteaux
• Medieval streets
• Pilgrimage sites
• Loire riverbanks
• Fine arts museums

• Saint-Gatien Cathedral

  Three centuries of building work, from 1170 to 1547, left Saint-Gatien Cathedral as a layered record of shifting architectural fashions, its choir in austere Rayonnant Gothic while its twin towers arrive in full Renaissance dress. The 13th-century stained glass inside survived the Revolution and two world wars intact.

• Basilica of Saint Martin

  Saint Martin was buried here in 397, and his tomb drew pilgrims from across medieval Europe for over a thousand years. The neo-Byzantine basilica standing today, completed in 1924 by Victor Laloux, replaced a vast medieval church demolished during the Revolution, whose only survivors are two towers still visible nearby.

• Place Plumereau

  Before it became Tours' most photographed square, Place Plumereau was simply a hat market, known in the 13th century as the Carroi aux Chapeaux. The conservation effort that rescued its 15th-century half-timbered facades in the 1960s and 1970s became a reference point for French heritage policy more broadly.

• Château de Chenonceau

  Built across the River Cher on a bridge commissioned by Diane de Poitiers and extended into a gallery by Catherine de Medici, Chenonceau spent World War I as a hospital and World War II as a crossing point between occupied and free France, with the gallery spanning the demarcation line.

• Château de Villandry

  Villandry's fame rests entirely on its gardens: a Renaissance arrangement built from scratch in the 20th century after the original plantings had long disappeared, including the "Four Gardens of Love" laid out in geometric box hedges. The château itself dates to 1532, when Jean Le Breton, Controller-General for War under Francis I, transformed a medieval fortress on the site where Philip II and Richard I had once negotiated peace in 1189.

• Priory of Saint-Cosme

  Pierre de Ronsard, the 16th-century poet considered the prince of French Renaissance verse, spent his final years as prior here and is buried in the grounds. During the 12th century the canons described it as "a heaven on earth that eased the journey to the real heaven," and contemporary stained glass by Zao Wou-Ki now shares the ruins with that medieval masonry.

• Museum of Companionship

  Housed in the medieval dormitory of the Abbey of Saint-Julien, this museum is devoted to the Compagnons du Tour de France, the centuries-old guild network recognised by UNESCO in 2010. Among the exhibits is a 19th-century masterwork confection that demonstrates the extraordinary precision demands placed on apprentices seeking full guild membership.