Tours

Administrative centre of Indre-et-Loire département in Centre region, west-central France, on the River Loire 200 km/125 mi southwest of Paris; population (1990) 133,400, conurbation 282,000. It manufactures chemicals, textiles, machinery, and electrical goods, and has a trade in agricultural produce, fruit, wine, and spirits. It is an ancient city and was capital of the former province of Touraine. Tours became the seat of the French government for four days in 1940 during World War II.

Tours was the site of the French defeat of the Arabs in 732 under Charles Martel. The novelist Honoré de Balzac was born here (1799).

Features Tours is a tourist centre for the Loire Valley, and is situated close to the point where the River Cher joins the Loire. There is a 13th-16th-century archiepiscopal cathedral of St Gatien with fine glass and cloisters. The 17th-18th-century archiepiscopal palace is now a museum. There are half-timbered houses and narrow medieval streets in the old quarter of Tours, around Place Plumereau in the western part of the city. Tours has a university and is an important railway centre. Tours' importance as the centre of a wine-producing area is reflected in the museum of the wines of Touraine in the ruined abbey of St Julien.

History Known to the Romans as Caesarodonum, the town passed to the Visigoths in the 5th century. It developed in importance after the time of St Martin (died 397 AD), the third bishop of Tours, and it was here that St Gregory (bishop of Tours from 573) founded the abbey which was later associated with the name of Alcuin (abbot of St Martin from 796) and which became one of the great centres of learning in the Middle Ages. A silk industry was established by Louis XI, but it declined after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, since most of the craftsmen were Huguenots (French Protestants). Tours was the seat of the French government in 1870 during the siege of Paris.