Touraine

Touraine, historical and cultural region encompassing the central French département of Indre-et-Loire and coextensive with the former province of Touraine. The historical province of Touraine was bounded northeast by Orléanais, southeast by Berry, southwest by Poitou, west by Anjou, and north by Maine.

In Roman times the country was inhabited by the Gallic tribe of the Turones, from whom the name of the province and also that of its capital, Tours, are derived. The Turones were unwarlike and offered practically no resistance to the invader, though they joined in the revolt of Vercingetorix in 52 bc. The capital city, Caesarodunum, which was built on the site of the eastern part of the present city of Tours, was made by Valentinian the metropolis of the 3rd Lyonnaise, which included roughly the later provinces of Touraine, Brittany, Maine, and Anjou. Christianity seems to have been introduced into Touraine not much earlier than the beginning of the 4th century ad, although tradition assigns St. Gatien, the first bishop of Tours, to the 3rd. The ecclesiastical province dates from the episcopate of the great St. Martin of Tours, who in the 4th century founded the Abbey of Marmoutier, near Tours, and whose tomb in the city became a celebrated shrine. In the 5th century the country was incorporated in the Visigothic kingdom, which stretched from the Loire River into Spain. When Clovis overthrew the Visigothic power in Gaul in 507, Touraine became part of the Frankish kingdom. During the partitions of the kingdom between the successors of Clovis, Touraine was much disputed. Local counts did less to civilize the country than churchmen did; and under Charlemagne the abbot Alcuin enhanced its cultural prestige. In the second half of the 9th century Touraine was dominated by Robert the Strong and his successors or by their nominees. In the 10th century it was fiercely contested between the counts of Blois and of Anjou. The Angevin Geoffrey Martel won the country in 1044.

Philip II Augustus of France, during his long struggle against the Angevin kings of England, reconquered Touraine in 1203–05. In 1360 it was raised to a peerage duchy, remaining on the French side of the frontier drawn by the Treaty of Brétigny between France and England. In that crucial phase of the Hundred Years’ War characterized by the campaigns of Joan of Arc, Touraine was the principal base of King Charles VII. Louis XI made Plessin-lès-Tours his favourite seat. The magnificent châteaus—in fact, palaces—at Amboise, Azay-le-Rideau, and Chenonceaux bear witness to the splendour of the province in the latter period of the Renaissance.

The establishment of the royal residence at distant Versailles and the forced emigration of its Huguenot silk weavers led to the area’s decline after 1700. The province was abolished in 1790, during the French Revolution, when France was reorganized into départements. The districts of northern Touraine (Chemillé, Saint-Cyr-du-Gault, and Montrichard) went to Loir-et-Cher, the southeast (Brenne, with Châtillon-sur-Indre and Azay-le-Ferron) to Indre, and the extreme southwest (La Roche-Posay and Saint-Romain) to Vienne; but the formerly Poitevin Richelieu and the formerly Angevin Bourgueil, Gizeux, and Château-la-Vallière were annexed to the greater part of Touraine to form the département of Indre-et-Loire.

The traditional large estates of Touraine have for the most part disappeared. The communes of Bourgueil, Saint-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil, Restigné, Benais, and Ingrandes produce fine red wines. The red wines of Joué-lès-Tours, Saint-Avertin, Sainte-Radegonde-en-Touraine, Larçay, and Chambourg-sur-Indre come from vineyards on the left bank of the Loire River and along the Indre River.

Much of the population of Touraine is of Celtic origin. Roman Catholicism predominates, but immigrants from the Netherlands have augmented the Calvinist population. The langue d’oïl (forerunner of modern French) was the dominant language from the 17th century.