Behind the Porte Royale, the Musée Lansyer occupies the house of local nineteenth-century landscape painter Lansyer, done up in period style (daily except Tues: June–Sept 10am–7pm; April, May & Oct 10am–noon & 1.30–6pm; €4.20). Straight ahead is the Romanesque church, the Collégiale de St-Ours, with its distinctively odd roof-line – the nave bays are capped by two octagonal stone pyramids, sandwiched between two more conventional spires. The porch has some entertaining twelfth-century monster carvings, and the stoup, or basin for holy water, is a Gallo-Roman altar.The northern end of the citadel is taken up by the Logis Royal, or Royal Lodgings, of Charles VII and his three successors (daily: mid-March to June & last two weeks in Sept 9am–noon & 2–6pm; July to mid-Sept 9am–7pm; Oct to mid-March 9am–noon & 2–5pm; €3.80, €5.10 including donjon). The medieval half of the palace was home to two women of some importance to Charles: Joan of Arc, victorious from Orléans, who came here to give the defeatist Dauphin another pep talk about coronations, and later the less significant (but much sexier) Agnès Sorel, Charles's lover. Even the pope took a fancy to Agnès, which allowed Charles to be the first French king to have an officially recognized mistress. She was buried at Loches and her tomb now lies in the fifteenth-century wing, her alabaster recumbent figure restored after anticlerical Revolutionary soldiers mistook her for a saint. Also in the same room are copies of portraits of her in full regalia and a painting of the Virgin in her likeness; the semi-nudity in both was no artist's fantasy, but a courtly fashion trend set by Agnès. From the Logis Royal, cobbled streets overlooked by handsome town houses wind through to the far end of the elevated citadel, where the donjon (daily: mid-March to Sept 9.30am–7pm; Oct to mid-March 10am–1pm & 2.30–6pm; €3.80, €5.10 including château) begun by Foulques Nerra, the eleventh-century count of Anjou, stands in grim ruin. Unnerving gantry stairways climb up through the empty shell of the tall keep to the top, and you can also visit the dungeons. Louis XI's adviser, Cardinal La Balve, was supposed to have been locked up here in a wooden cage for eleven years, and there was time for Ludovico Sforza – Duke of Milan, patron of Leonardo da Vinci and captive of Louis XII – to decorate his cave-like cell with ruddy inscriptions and paintings that are still visible.
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