Passage du Coeur Navré, Covered passageway in Old Tours, France.

Passage du Cœur Navré is a narrow covered alley in Old Tours linking Rue Colbert, the medieval main street, to Place Foire-le-Roi. It measures under 50 metres and bends at a right angle in its northern part. The photograph shows light stone side walls with a patch of exposed red brick on the left, a flat ceiling of rough stone and plaster crossed by three thick timber beams, and a pale concrete floor with damp patches.

The passage's dating is not certain: it may go back to the 15th or 16th centuries, like the facades of the houses lining it, or be older. It was then a dependency of the fief of Saint-Julien Abbey. It was inscribed as a monument historique by decree of 8 July 1946, covering its vaults and the facades and roofs of the adjoining houses, except the south facades of 64 and 66 rue Colbert.

The name comes from a sign that once hung on one of the passage's facades, showing a heart pierced by an arrow (navré means wounded). An undocumented tradition links the name to the sorrow of condemned prisoners who took this passage toward the scaffold on Place Foire-le-Roi.

The passage links Rue Colbert with Place Foire-le-Roi and bends at a right angle in its northern part, so the far end is hidden until you turn. The floor is uneven concrete with damp patches and the ceiling is crossed by low timber beams, so watch your step and your head. The open wooden door at the Foire-le-Roi end lets daylight in.

The passage is one of several narrow covered lanes surviving in Old Tours, alongside the rue du Cheval Blanc, the Petite rue Simon and the rue des Trois Canettes. Most of these lanes disappeared during the 20th century through urban modernisation; a 1916 watercolour by Charles Henri Grangé records the rue du Cheval Blanc's stone vault, since lost.