Half Day Walking Tour of Loches

The small town of Loches in the Touraine Loire Valley is packed with history. The medieval kings of France and England lived here, Joan of Arc was here, the sorrowing Anne of Bretagne and the lovely Agnes Sorel. You won't see a modern building in the old centre of town. We'll visit the Royal Apartments and the oldest castle keep in France, full of fascinating and unique graffiti and resonating with the sense of past lives. This is a place where history genuinely changed because it was here that Joan convinced the young King to go to Reims to be crowned. This legitimised his authority and he turned into long reigning and quite good King -- who spent much time at Loches, where he had installed his remarkable mistress. I will take you to 'meet' her and I'll talk about the status of mistresses in medieval France (hint -- we have a quite wrong idea of their position these days). The graffiti in two of the towers on the citadel are absolutely unique and I will tell you the astounding stories of their creation!