Tours Cathedral, Gothic cathedral in Tours, France
Cathédrale Saint-Gatien has a west front with three pointed-arch portals, a central rose window and two towers of 68 and 69 metres whose tops are early French Renaissance. The nave vaults rise 29 metres above a three-level elevation, and the choir keeps its fifteen 13th-century windows. The chevet stands free of later buildings.
Construction of the cathedral began in 1170 over the foundations of three previous structures and continued until 1547, with each phase adding new architectural styles. This extended building period shows how the structure evolved alongside the city's growth and changing needs over more than three centuries.
The cathedral is dedicated to Saint Gatien, the first bishop of Tours, whose name replaced that of Saint Maurice in 1356. The 13th-century choir windows show the lives of Christ, the Apostles and the saints, and also the trades of the guilds that paid for them. The chapter later gathered stained glass from demolished city churches such as Saint-Julien and Saint-Martin, now mostly in the ambulatory.
The west front opens onto place de la Cathédrale in Old Tours, with the three portals at ground level and a chain barrier across the base. The two towers stand outside the line of the old Roman city wall, whose section is still visible behind them from the north. The nave is 29 metres high but narrower than in other French cathedrals, so the aisles give the closest view of the 13th-century choir glass.
In the nave stands the tomb of two children of King Charles VIII and Anne of Brittany, carved in 1506 by Guillaume Regnault from Carrara marble. It was moved here from the church of St Martin after the French Revolution, and its recumbent figures follow the school of Michel Colombe.
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