St. Martin died at Candes about 400; his body was brought to Tours, and a modest oratory of wood erected above his tomb. In 472 a new edifice was consecrated; it was the most important work in the West erected after the fall of Rome and before Charlemagne. Clovis and his successors heaped benefits upon the monastery established near the church, and even carried in their expeditions the cope and relics of the saint. Having become one of the great Christian pilgrimages, by the eighth century the church was the centre of a new town, distinct from the old, as already mentioned.
Between 906 and 918 Martinopolis or Châteauneuf was surrounded by walls; in 997 the church was burnt. The next church lasted till 1175, when the third church was built. In 1562 it was ruined by the Huguenots, and in 1802, in order to make an opening for a street, everything was demolished except the two towers and a gallery of the little cloister.
The new Church of St. Martin. In 1860 excavations were carried out to discover the bones of St. Martin. These efforts were successful, and now an imposing new church with a huge dome has been built over his remains.
Tour de l’Horloge (or Du Trésor), built in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, is crowned with a small dome of the eighteenth century.
Tour Charlemagne, of the same period, is so called because at its base was the tomb of Luitgarde, third wife of Charlemagne, who died at Tours in 800.
Notre Dame la Riche, founded in the fourth century, and rebuilt in the fifteenth, was greatly destroyed by Huguenots in 1562, and restored recently.
The Priory St. Côme.—The remains near the bridge of St. Cyn include the church, belonging to the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, and the Romanesque refectory.
The Chapelle du Lycée is the ancient Church of the Minimes. The first stone laid by Marie de Medici in 1630.
St. Julien (Rue du Colbert) is the abbey church on the site of the church founded, it is said, by Clovis.
The fifth reconstruction took place between 1225 and 1259, after a fire. The building is a remarkable example of early ogee style. It was sold at the Revolution, when it became an hotel, but it has since been bought and restored. In the capitulary room, north of the choir, which has been used as a stable, Henri III., in March, 1589, convoked the Parlement de Paris, which met in Tours owing to the troubles of the League.