Chief town of the Loire valley and capital of the Touraine region, TOURS has long had a reputation as a staid, bourgeois city. An English travel writer wrote in 1913:

Tours has an immense air of good breeding ? you have visions of portentously dull entertainments in lofty gilded saloons where everything is rather icily magnificent .

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 .