Book Loches attraction tickets

Few towns in the Loire Valley wear their medieval past as visibly as Loches. Perched above the Indre river in the Touraine, this compact royal citadel has been continuously inhabited for more than a thousand years, and the evidence is layered into every stone of its old town. The cité médiévale, enclosed within its original ramparts, is considered one of the best-preserved fortified ensembles in France, a fact that draws historians, architects, and curious travellers in roughly equal measure.

The citadel itself divides into two distinct poles. At the northern end stands the Logis Royal, the royal lodge where Charles VII held court and where Joan of Arc came twice to urge the king towards his coronation at Reims. At the southern end, the keep, one of the tallest Romanesque towers in Europe at around 36 metres, rises with an austerity that makes the royal apartments feel almost domestic by comparison. Between them stretches the collegiate church of Saint-Ours, distinguished by its pair of hollow pyramidal spires, a form so unusual that architectural historians still debate its origins. Walking the length of the citadel takes no more than twenty minutes, yet the density of significant fabric is remarkable.