TOURNUS is a beautiful little town on the banks of the Saône, just off the autoroute and N6, 27km south of Chalon and 30km north of Mâcon. Squeezed between the N6 and the river, the narrow huddled streets have the inward-looking, self-protecting feel of a Mediterranean town, belying a prosperous past when commercial traffic thronged the busy riverside quays. The quays are quiet today, and Tournus's modern prosperity is based on agriculture, light industry – domestic appliances in particular – and, increasingly, tourism, with a nice sideline in art galleries and antique shops. But the quays still make a delightful picnic spot, looking out over the broad sweep of the river and its wide flat valley.You enter the town from the N6 through a gateway flanked by medieval towers – once the entrance to a monastery compound – and are confronted by the old abbey church of St-Philibert, one of the earliest and most influential Romanesque buildings in Burgundy. The first construction dates back to around 900 AD and the foundation of the monastic community by monks fleeing Norman raids on their home community of Noirmoutier off the Atlantic coast, although the present building dates to the first half of the eleventh century. The facade of the church, with its powerful towers and simple decoration of Lombard arcading, has the massive qualities and clean, pared-down lines more associated with a fortress. A narrow staircase opposite the main entrance in the west front leads up to a high chapel that looks down into the body of the church, a vestige of the Carolingian tradition of church building which doubled as a defensive feature. The chapel's main arch is inset with two extraordinary sculptures that may represent the abbot responsible for the rebuilding (on the right, holding a hammer and giving a blessing) and possibly the sculptor himself (on the left, full-face), who may even be the "Gerlamus" of the inscription – in which case this may be one of the earliest self-portraits of the medieval period. The nave and transept below are suprisingly light and graceful for such an early church. They have suffered slightly from nineteenth-century meddling, but the three exquisitely carved arches at the far end of the choir remain unharmed, although the effect is marred by aggressively abstract 1950s stained glass. Steps in the north transept lead down to the crypt, where a well plunges down to the level of the Saône – useful in times of siege. Beside the church, the Musée Bourguignon (April–Oct daily except Mon 10am–1pm & 2–5pm; €2.30) is a moderately interesting exposition of nineteenth century Burgundian life that uses carefully costumed wax dummies and nineteenth-century furniture to create various everyday tableaux. More compelling is the newly opened Hôtel Dieu (April–Oct daily except Tues 11am–6pm; €4.60), one of the region's many charity hospitals, and one of the best preserved – by the time Tournus decided to modernize its hospital, the historical importance of the old one was already clear. The sisters of Saint Martha, an order established in the fifteenth century to serve the hospital in Beaune, served as ward nurses from the hospital's inception in 1674 right up until it closed in 1978, tending to patients in the ordered rows of closed oak beds, set in high-ceilinged wards to allow the noxious air to circulate. It's worth visiting for the elaborate dispensary alone, complete with a host of faïence pots and hand-blown glass jars. Another wing of the complex houses the Musée Greuze (same hours and ticket), centred around local painter, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, who was fashionable in the late eighteenth century for sentimental, moralistic works. The collection here does little to suggest that he deserved a longer-lived reputation, though there's an interesting self-portrait and some instructive drawings.
Pages in section ‘Tournus’: Practicalities.
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