Cathedral quarter
France > Loire > Cities > Tours > Cathedral quarter
The great west towers of the Cathédrale St-Gatien, standing on the square of the same name, are visible all over the city. Their surfaces crawl with decorated stone in the Flamboyant Gothic style, and even the Renaissance belfries that cap them share the same spirit of refined exuberance. Inside, the style moves back in time with the more sobre High Gothic east end – built in the thirteenth-century – and its glorious stained-glass windows. Just beyond the south transept stands the tomb of the sons of Charles VIII and Anne de Bretagne. After their deaths, and the accidental death of their father, the Valois line proper came to an end, and Anne was obliged by law to marry Charles's cousin, Louis XII.A door in the north aisle leads to the Cloître de la Psalette (Mon–Sat 9.30am–12.30pm & 2–6pm; Sun 2–6pm; Oct–March closes 5pm; €2.30), which has an unfinished air, with the great foot of a flying buttress planted in the southeast corner and the missing south arcade – lost when a road was driven through in 1802 by the same progressive, anticlerical prefect who destroyed the basilica of St-Martin. On the north and east sides, late Gothic blends with Renaissance detailing, especially on the small but perfect spiral staircase, with its twisted central pillar. You can climb up it to the gallery level, which leads through to the library on the cloister's west side. Just south of the cathedral, the Musée des Beaux-Arts (daily except Tues 9am–12.45pm & 2–6pm; free) is housed in the former archbishop's palace. Other than Mantegna's intense, unmissable Agony in the Garden (1457–9), in the basement, there are few celebrity works in the large collection. Even Rembrandt's much-advertised Flight into Egypt is a small oil study rather than a full-scale work. But the stately, loosely chronological progression of palatial seventeenth- and eighteenth-century rooms, each furnished and decorated to match the era of the paintings it displays, is extremely attractive. Local gems include Boulanger's portrait of Balzac, and engravings of The Five Senses by the locally born Abraham Bosse, which have been interpreted as full-size canvases in the handsome Louis XIII room. On the other side of the cathedral, between rue Albert-Thomas and the river, just two towers remain of the ancient royal Château of Tours. You can get inside when an exhibition is being held but there's nothing much left of the interior. In the fifteenth-century Logis des Gouverneurs alongside (mid-March to mid-Dec Wed & Sat 2–6pm; free), across the remnants of the city's Gallo-Roman wall, there's an exhibition of historical artefacts called "Vivre à Tours" (Life in Tours) that gives quite a plausible sense of how the city has developed over the centuries.
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