Tours is a city in France, the préfecture (capital city) of the Indre-et-Loire département,
on the lower reaches of the river Loire, between Orléans and the Atlantic coast.
Touraine, the region around Tours, is known for its wines, the alleged perfection
(as perceived by some speakers) of its local spoken French, and for the famous
Battle of Tours in 732.
It is also the site of the cycling race Paris-Tours.
Tours is the largest city in the Centre region of France, although it is not the regional capital,
which resides in its second-largest city of Orléans.
In 2006, the city itself had 142,000 inhabitants and the metropolitan area had 297,631.
Tours' sister cities are Springfield, Missouri, USA (1984) and Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA (1991).
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Tours
It is a reputation that
Tours doesn't really deserve: it's a bustling urban centre,
only an hour's journey from Paris on the TGV line, with a great
many restaurants, bars and cafés, and, thanks to the student
population, a lively nightlife. These factors, together with
the building of a new conference centre, have brought an influx
of business people and young commuters into an already large
and fairly diverse population. It has a prettified and fairly
animated old quarter , some good museums - of wine, crafts, stained
glass and an above-average Beaux-Arts museum - and a great many
fine buildings, not least of which is St Gatien's cathedral .
And if you don't have your own transport, it's the obvious Touraine
base, with both bus and train connections to a snatch of notable
châteaux - Villandry, Langeais, Azay-le-Rideau and Amboise
- as well as the celebrated wine-producing towns of Vouvray and
Bourgeuil
The centre of Tours lies
between the Loire and its tributary, the Cher, but has spread
far across both banks, with industrial Tours north of the Loire.
Neither river is a particular feature of the town, though there
are parks on islands in both rivers and a newish footbridge across
the Loire from the site of the old castle on quai d'Orléans.
The city's old quarter focuses not on the cathedral or the château,
but on the picturesque place Plumereau, some 600m to the west
of the main rue Nationale
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