Château de Tours

Visuel Château de Tours

History of the castle

From TOURS – Château de Tours – official website

On the remains of wooden buildings, themselves built on the remains of Gallo-Roman baths, the Chateau de Tour’s first stones are laid in the eleventh century by order of the Counts of Anjou, relying on some vestiges of the Roman wall that surrounded Caesarodunum, the Roman settlement here.

The location is strategic. Just in front of the only bridge that allows passage north of the Loire, and bordering the city, the building is probably an entry point for men and goods while being a few steps from the cathedral.

The castle is mainly used as a residence, but things change in the thirteenth century. It must be said that France takes shape, and Philippe-Auguste includes Touraine in this great kingdom. The castle of Tours is then enlarged to become a real defensive fortress, perhaps to resist a possible English attack, or simply to impose a little more, in the face of the growing importance of Chateauneuf and St. Martin’s Basilica.

A drawbridge gives access to the castle with its large square tower of the eleventh century, and four towers including the tower of Guise which is a dungeon with a wall thirty meters high and three metres thick, surrounding not only the inhabited building but also the chapel and a large courtyard.

The estate extends further, with new homes, a barnyard, a stable. Kings go there, the future Louis XI is married there, but in the Renaissance the competition is tough against the new castles at the edge of the water. As the defensive role decreases and in the seventeenth century the Wilson Bridge is constructed, the role of the chateau changes, serving in turn as arsenal, begging depot, military barracks, and even stone quarry to build the river’s docks!

Today there remains only the Logis of Governors, which served for meetings of city officials, and the tower of medieval Guise leaning against the flag of Mars built in the eighteenth century.

Google Maps – Château de Tours

A list of some notable gardens in Touraine

March 7, 2018March 14, 2018

Just taking note of this while I think of it. It stands out in its omission of Villandry but the other gardens are less well known so a really good list

From Touraine Tourism Board

the contemporary creativity at Rivau,
the 600 tomato varieties at la Bourdaisière,
the orange trees at Chateau Gaillard,
the poetic roses at the Ronsard museum,
the rare plant species at the Valmer kitchen garden conservatory,
the botanic garden and the Gloriette park of Tours,
the skill for the ‘potager au carré à la française‘,
the elegance of the park of Richelieu and one of the castles of Amboise, Ussé and Chenonceau,
the surprising Pagode de Chanteloup,
and the village-garden of Chédigny and its 800 varieties of rose bushes.

Tours – Musée des Beaux-Arts

The Musée des beaux-arts de Tours is located in the bishop’s former palace near the Cathedral St. Gatien, where it has been since 1910.It displays rich and varied collections, including that of painting which is one of the first in France both in quality and the diversity of the works presented.

The Museum of Fine Arts Tours is housed in a historic building of exceptional quality. The site is of paramount importance for the history of ancient Caesarodunum; the museum houses in its underground the most beautiful lapidary inscription to the glory of the Turons. The first bishops had chosen to settle near the cathedral, in a palace along the wall of the fourth century.

Another vestige of this period, a chapel leaning against the archbishops palace dating from the fourth century. and rebuilt in 591 by order of Gregory of Tours. This building was transformed in the twelfth century and partly destroyed in the seventeenth century during the development of the new Archbishop’s palace of Bishop Bertrand d’Eschaux .. In the twelfth century was built the so-called wing of the Synod. Constantly transformed over the centuries, this huge hall where gathered twice (1468 and 1484) the States General of the Kingdom of France is one of the most evocative historical sites in the history of Touraine.

Monsignor Rosset de Fleury completed the project thanks to the construction of the pediment and attic palace and the layout of the terraces whose curve follows the layout of the Roman amphitheater. Finally, Monsignor de Conzié had the imposing portal and the semicircle of the main courtyard erected in 1775, instead of the old stables. He transformed the old synod hall into an archiepiscopal chapel and commissioned an antique colonnade for this purpose.

After 1789, the Palace of the Archbishops became a theater, Central School, library then by departmental order of October 6, 1792 and the passionate energy of the founder of the school of drawing of the City, Charles-Antoine Rougeot and his son-in-law, Jean -Jacques Raverot, a deposit of works seized at the Revolution.

The museum was officially created in 1801, in 1802 and throughout the nineteenth century, buildings were again assigned to the archbishop. It was not until 1910 that the collections returned to the former archiepiscopal palace.

Panoramic view of Tours by Demachy

Collections (Wikipedia)

The museum has a large and fairly homogeneous collection of paintings, which includes several masterpieces such as two paintings by Andrea Mantegna, from the predella of the San Zeno Altarpiece:

Collection of Italian Primitives shows works by Mantegna, Antonio Vivarini, Giovanni di Paolo, Lippo d’Andrea and Lorenzo Veneziano. Italian painting of the following centuries is represented by works of Giovanni Battista Moroni, Mattia Preti, Sebastiano Conca, Francesco Cairo and Giuseppe Bazzani.
The French painting until the nineteenth is displayed by artists such as Claude Vignon, Philippe de Champaigne, Jacques Blanchard, Noël Coypel, Eustache Le Sueur, Jean Jouvenet, Charles de La Fosse, Hyacinthe Rigaud, Nicolas de Largillière, Pierre Subleyras, François Lemoyne, Jean-Marc Nattier, François Boucher, Carle Van Loo, Nicolas Lancret, Jean-Baptiste Perronneau, Joseph Vernet, Hubert Robert, Ingres, Théodore Chassériau, Eugène Delacroix, Edgar Degas and Claude Monet.
The collection of Flemish and Dutch painting presents works by artists such as Rubens (Virgin and Child), Rembrandt, Frans II Francken, Gerard ter Borch, Bartholomeus van der Helst, David Teniers the Younger.
Modern painting is represented with artworks by Maurice Denis or Maria Elena Vieira da Silva.
There are sculptures by Jean-Antoine Houdon, Auguste Rodin, Antoine Bourdelle, Alberto Giacometti and Olivier Debré.

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Musée des Beaux-Arts official website

Google Maps – Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours

Tours – Ville

Tours Amphitheatre

From Wikipedia

History

In Gallic times the city of Tours was important as a crossing point of the Loire. Becoming part of the Roman Empire during the 1st century AD, the city was named “Caesarodunum” (“hill of Caesar”). The name evolved in the 4th century when the original Gallic name, Turones, became first “Civitas Turonum” then “Tours”. It was at this time that the amphitheatre of Tours, one of the five largest amphitheatres of the Empire, was built. Tours became the metropolis of the Roman province of Lugdunum towards 380–388, dominating the Loire Valley, Maine and Brittany. One of the outstanding figures of the history of the city was Saint Martin, second bishop who shared his coat with a naked beggar in Amiens. This incident and the importance of Martin in the medieval Christian West made Tours, and its position on the route of pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, a major centre during the Middle Ages.

Middle Ages

In the 6th century Gregory of Tours, author of the Ten Books of History, made his mark on the town by restoring the cathedral destroyed by a fire in 561. Saint Martin’s monastery benefited from its inception, at the very start of the 6th century from patronage and support from the Frankish king, Clovis, which increased considerably the influence of the saint, the abbey and the city in Gaul. In the 9th century, Tours was at the heart of the Carolingian Rebirth, in particular because of Alcuin abbot of Marmoutier.

In 732 AD, Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi and a large army of Muslim horsemen from Al-Andalus advanced 500 kilometres (311 miles) deep into France, and were stopped at Tours by Charles Martel and his infantry igniting the Battle of Tours. The outcome was defeat for the Muslims, preventing France from Islamic conquest. In 845, Tours repulsed the first attack of the Viking chief Hasting (Haesten). In 850, the Vikings settled at the mouths of the Seine and the Loire. Still led by Hasting, they went up the Loire again in 852 and sacked Angers, Tours and the abbey of Marmoutier.

During the Middle Ages, Tours consisted of two juxtaposed and competing centres. The “City” in the east, successor of the late Roman ‘castrum’, was composed of the archiepiscopal establishment (the cathedral and palace of the archbishops) and of the castle of Tours, seat of the authority of the Counts of Tours (later Counts of Anjou) and of the King of France. In the west, the “new city” structured around the Abbey of Saint Martin was freed from the control of the City during the 10th century (an enclosure was built towards 918) and became “Châteauneuf”. This space, organized between Saint Martin and the Loire, became the economic centre of Tours. Between these two centres remained Varennes, vineyards and fields, little occupied except for the Abbaye Saint-Julien established on the banks of the Loire. The two centres were linked during the 14th century.

france_louis_xi-1

Place Plumereau, Medieval buildings

Tours became the capital of the county of Tours or Touraine, territory bitterly disputed between the counts of Blois and Anjou – the latter were victorious in the 11th century. It was the capital of France at the time of Louis XI, who had settled in the castle of Montils (today the castle of Plessis in La Riche, western suburbs of Tours). Tours and Touraine remained until the 16th century a permanent residence of the kings and court. The rebirth gave Tours and Touraine many private mansions and castles, joined together to some extent under the generic name of the Châteaux of the Loire. It is also at the time of Louis XI that the silk industry was introduced and despite difficulties, the industry still survives to this day.

Louis XI, called “Louis the Prudent”, was a monarch of

the House of Valois who ruled as King of France from 1461 to 1483

16th–18th centuries

Tours Cathedral, 15th-century Flamboyant Gothic west front with Renaissance pinnacles, completed 1547.

Charles IX passed through the city at the time of his royal tour of France between 1564 and 1566, accompanied by the Court and various noblemen: his brother the Duke of Anjou, Henri de Navarre, the cardinals of Bourbon and Lorraine. At this time, the Catholics returned to power in Angers: the intendant assumed the right to nominate the aldermen. The Massacre of Saint-Barthelemy was not repeated at Tours. The Protestants were imprisoned by the aldermen – a measure which prevented their extermination. The permanent return of the Court to Paris and then Versailles marked the beginning of a slow but permanent decline. Guillaume the Metayer (1763–1798), known as Rochambeau, the well known counter-revolutionary chief of Mayenne, was shot here on 8th Thermidor Year VI (26th July 1798).

19th–20th centuries

Gare de Tours, Place du Général-Leclerc, Tours

It was the arrival of the railway in the 19th century which saved the city by making it an important nodal point. The main railway station is known as Tours-Saint-Pierre-des-Corps. At that time, Tours was expanding towards the south into a district known as the Prébendes. The importance of the city as a centre of communications contributed to its revival and, as the 20th century progressed, Tours became a dynamic conurbation, economically oriented towards the service sector.

First World War

The city was greatly affected by the First World War. A force of 25,000 American soldiers arrived in 1917, setting up textile factories for the manufacture of uniforms, repair shops for military equipment, munitions dumps, an army post office and an American military hospital at Augustins. Thus Tours became a garrison town with a resident general staff. The American presence is remembered today by the Woodrow Wilson bridge over the Loire, which was officially opened in July 1918 and bears the name of the man who was President of the USA from 1913 to 1921. Three American air force squadrons, including the 492nd, were based at the Parçay-Meslay airfield, their personnel playing an active part in the life of the city.

Inter-war years

In 1920, the city was host to the Congress of Tours, which saw the creation of the French Communist Party.

Second World War

Tours was also marked by the Second World War. In 1940 the city suffered massive destruction, and for four years it was a city of military camps and fortifications. From 10 to 13 June 1940, Tours was the temporary seat of the French government before its move to Bordeaux. German incendiary bombs caused a huge fire which blazed out of control from 20 to 22 June and destroyed part of the city centre. Some architectural masterpieces of the 16th and 17th centuries were lost, as was the monumental entry to the city. The Wilson Bridge (known locally as the ‘stone bridge’) carried a water main which supplied the city; the bridge was dynamited to slow the progress of the German advance. With the water main severed and unable to extinguish the inferno, the inhabitants had no option but to flee to safety. More heavy air raids by Allied forces devastated the area around the railway station in 1944, causing several hundred deaths.

Post-war developments

A plan for the rebuilding of the downtown area drawn up by the local architect Camille Lefèvre was adopted even before the end of the war. The plan was for 20 small quadrangular blocks of housing to be arranged around the main road (la rue Nationale), which was widened. This regular layout attempted to echo, yet simplify, the 18th-century architecture. Pierre Patout succeeded Lefèvre as the architect in charge of rebuilding in 1945. At one time there was talk of demolishing the southern side of the rue Nationale in order to make it in keeping with the new development.

The recent history of Tours is marked by the personality of Jean Royer, who was Mayor for 36 years and helped to save the old town from demolition by establishing one of the first Conservation Areas. This example of conservation policy would later inspire the Malraux Law for the safeguarding of historic city centres. In the 1970s, Jean Royer also extended the city to the south by diverting the course of the River Cher to create the districts of Rives du Cher and des Fontaines; at the time, this was one of the largest urban developments in Europe. In 1970, the François Rabelais University was founded; this is centred on the bank of the Loire in the downtown area, and not – as it was then the current practice – in a campus in the suburbs. The latter solution was also chosen by the twin university of Orleans. Royer’s long term as Mayor was, however, not without controversy, as exemplified by the construction of the practical – but aesthetically unattractive – motorway which runs along the bed of a former canal just 1,500 metres (4,900 feet) from the cathedral. Another bone of contention was the original Vinci Congress Centre by Jean Nouvel. This project incurred debts although it did, at least, make Tours one of France’s principal conference centres.

Jean Germain, a member of the Socialist Party, became Mayor in 1995 and made debt reduction his priority. Ten years later, his economic management is regarded as much wiser than that of his predecessor, the financial standing of the city having returned to a stability. However, the achievements of Jean Germain are criticised by the municipal opposition for a lack of ambition: no large building projects comparable with those of Jean Royer have been instituted under his double mandate. This position is disputed by those in power, who affirm their policy of concentrating on the quality of life, as evidenced by urban restoration, the development of public transport and cultural activities.