Musée des Beaux-Arts

Top choice


This superb fine-arts museum, in a gorgeous 18th-century archbishop’s palace, features paintings, sculpture, furniture and objets d'art from the 14th to 20th centuries. Highlights include paintings by Delacroix, Degas and Monet, a rare Rembrandt miniature and a Rubens Madonna and Child. Outside there's a magnificent cedar of Lebanon planted in 1804 and a flowery garden.


Lonely Planet's must-see attractions

Nearby attractions

1. Cathédrale St-Gatien

0.04 MILES

With its flying buttresses, gargoyles and twin Renaissance-style towers (70m) – and, inside, Gothic vaulting, dazzling stained glass and huge baroque…

2. Cloître de la Psalette

0.06 MILES

This cloister, built from 1442 to 1524 – that's why it's partly Flamboyant Gothic and party Renaissance – is located on the north side of the Cathédrale…

3. Église St-Julien

0.34 MILES

Most of this Gothic church, once part of a Benedictine abbey, dates from the mid-1200s.

4. Musée du Compagnonnage

0.35 MILES

This extraordinary museum – an absolute gem! – spotlights France's renowned compagnonnages, guild organisations of skilled craftspeople who have created…

5. Hôtel de Ville

0.38 MILES

Built from 1896 to 1904, Tours' monumental city hall was designed to project both republican values and municipal prestige.

6. Palais de Justice

0.43 MILES

Built in the 1840s, Tours' neoclassical courthouse has an imposing colonnade facing place Jean Jaurès.

7. Hôtel Gouïn

0.45 MILES

Hidden behind an Italianate façade, this gorgeous early-Renaissance residence – visible through a stone gate – was built for a wealthy merchant around…

8. Basilique St-Martin

0.56 MILES

In the Middle Ages, Tours was an important pilgrimage city thanks to the relics of soldier-turned-evangelist St Martin (c 317–97). In the 5th century a…

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