Every design for Tours

Tours gave France its money: under the Capetians the local coin, the livre tournois, became the currency of the whole kingdom. Long before that the Romans called the town Caesarodunum and raised the Tours Amphitheatre, one of the largest in their empire, and later Saint Martin made it a place of pilgrimage that the Basilique Saint-Martin still honours.

The city lies on the lower reaches of the Loire, between Orléans and the Atlantic coast, with the Cher running alongside to the south. In Gallic times this was a crossing point over the river, and the water still shapes the place: a garden city whose streets follow its natural setting, in what was once the province of Touraine. The historic centre around the Cathédrale Saint-Gatien and the lanes of Vieux-Tours carry the nicknames "White and Blue City" and "Le Petit Paris", and every year the Paris–Tours cycle race ends here.

Belonging here is something you taste as much as see — rillettes and rillons, Sainte-Maure-de-Touraine cheese, a glass from the Touraine vineyards — and something you feel crossing back over the Loire, when the Château de Tours comes into view and the city opens up to welcome you home.