Tours, France

Tours is a city in central France, the capital of the Indre-et-Loire department that is located on the lower reaches of the river Loire, between Orléans and the Atlantic coast. Touraine, the region around Tours the alleged perfection of its local spoken French, and for the famous Battle of Tours in 732. It is also the site of the cycling race Paris-Tours. Tours is the largest city in the Centre region of France, although it is not the regional capital, which resides in its second-largest city of Orléans. In 2006, the city itself had 142,000 inhabitants and the metropolitan area had 306,974.