Tournai, municipality, Wallonia Region, southwestern Belgium. It lies along the Schelde (Scheldt, or Escaut) River, northwest of Mons. Tournai has changed hands many times. As Turnacum, it was important in Roman times. Seized by the Salic Franks in the 5th century, it was the birthplace of the Frankish king Clovis I (c. 466) and became a Merovingian capital. A bishop’s see from the early 6th century, it was largely controlled by the counts of Flanders from the 860s until it was recovered by France and granted a charter in 1188. Under French protection but remote from French interference, it was a virtually republican zone. It fell to Henry VIII of England in 1513, was returned to France in 1518, and in 1521 was taken by Charles V, who attached it to the Netherlands, then a Spanish Habsburg province. From 1543 it was a centre of Calvinism and favoured the anti-Spanish rebels of the 1560s until Alessandro Farnese broke the defense of Christine de Lalaing, princess of Espinoy, and recaptured it for Spain after the siege of 1581. Taken by Louis XIV (1667) during the War of Devolution, it was transferred to the Austrian Habsburgs by the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), recaptured by the French in 1745, and restored to Austria in 1748. During the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods, it was again French from 1794 to 1814.
Tournai was notable for tapestry and copperware in the Middle Ages and for carpet weaving in the 18th century—crafts that have been revived there. Quarrying is important locally, and steel, leather goods, and hosiery are manufactured. The city’s cultural institutions include several specialized schools and museums of archaeology, natural history, fine arts, and folklore. Tournai was also renowned for a medieval school of sculptors, and the painter Rogier van der Weyden was a native. Tournai’s Cathedral of Notre Dame is a cruciform 11th–12th-century basilica, one of the finest in Europe, with five massive towers, a Gothic choir, and 13th-century reliquary shrines; it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2000. The city contains other notable medieval churches. Among other landmarks are the Belfry (c. 1188; 236 feet [72 metres] high), the 13th-century Trous Bridge, the Renaissance Cloth Hall, the Tower of Henry VIII (1513–16), and the tomb of Childeric I (father of Clovis), discovered in 1653. Pop. (2008 est.) mun., 68,193.