Blois

Excavations have found a large Gallic and Gallo-Roman settlement on the right bank, on the road from Chartres to Bourges, but Blois is first clearly mentioned by Gregory of Tours in the 6th century. From the 9th century it was the seat of powerful counts; Theobald I and his descendants, the Thibaldians, made the house of Blois one of the great families of Europe. In 1397 the county passed to Duke Louis I of Orléans, and in 1429 Joan of Arc made Blois her base for the relief of Orléans.

Duke Charles of Orléans settled in the château in 1440 after his English captivity, and his son, born here in 1462, became King Louis XII in 1498, bringing the court to Blois. The town was rebuilt with Renaissance mansions, and Francis I added a new wing and one of the finest libraries of the age before the court moved towards Fontainebleau. In December 1588, during the Estates General, Henry III had the Duke of Guise and his brother the cardinal murdered in the château.

Gaston of Orléans, exiled here in 1634, began a new classical wing and died in Blois in 1660. The medieval bridge collapsed in 1716 and was replaced by the Jacques-Gabriel bridge, and Blois became the capital of Loir-et-Cher in 1790. The railway arrived in 1846, and from 1848 Victor-Auguste Poulain's chocolate made the town industrial. In June 1940 German bombing destroyed much of the centre; in all, 230 people died and 1,522 buildings were damaged or destroyed during the Second World War. From 1959 large housing estates were built to the north.

Blois has belonged to France's Towns of Art and History network since 1986, and its culture leans on its past. The Rendez-vous de l'histoire each October is an internationally known festival of history, and the château's story — Louis XII, Francis I, Catherine de' Medici and the murder of the Duke of Guise — is part of local identity.

The town's famous sons include the illusionist Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, widely regarded as the father of modern conjuring, whose museum of magic faces the château, and the physicist Denis Papin, whose statue crowns the great staircase. In the 16th and 17th centuries Blois was known for its watchmakers and goldsmiths. Comics have a home at the Maison de la BD, whose BD Boum festival in November is free, and contemporary art at the Fondation du doute; the Halle aux grains is a national theatre stage.

Sport means basketball with ADA Blois Basket 41 and, since 2013, an international men's tennis tournament on the ATP Challenger Tour. In winter the festival Des lyres d'hiver brings an ice rink, a sledging run and a Christmas market to the centre and the outlying districts.

Blois had 47,219 inhabitants in 2023, the largest town in Loir-et-Cher and the fourth in Centre-Val de Loire. It straddles the river between the small Beauce plain to the north and the Sologne to the south. The northern estates built from 1959 are home to some 18,000 people and include a large priority area for urban renewal, while the old centre and Blois-Vienne are quieter.

The hospital is the department's largest employer. Industry has a long history here: an automotive plant is the town's second-largest employer, Valeo makes car headlamps, Procter & Gamble has made perfumes and toiletries here, and the historic Poulain chocolate factory gave its name to a whole quarter. A campus of the University of Tours teaches computing and law, and the town is the administrative centre of the department.

Recent years have brought a complete rebuilding of the station quarter in the 2020s and the redesign of streets linking the historic centre with the Place de la République. Daily life follows a provincial rhythm, with markets, long lunches and quiet Sundays, livened up in summer by visitors heading for the château and the Loire à Vélo route.

Blois sits between two food landscapes: the vineyards of the Loire and the woods and ponds of the Sologne to the south. The local wine is Cheverny, an appellation for dry whites in which Sauvignon Blanc makes up most of the blend, light reds of Gamay and Pinot Noir, and rosés, with a little sparkling wine. Touraine's goat's cheeses, such as the ash-rolled Sainte-Maure log with its straw through the centre, are on most cheese boards, as are the rillettes of nearby Tours, pork cooked slowly in its fat and shredded to spread on bread.

Chocolate is the town's own contribution. Victor-Auguste Poulain opened his first chocolate shop in Blois in 1848 and a large factory by the station from 1862, and his brand, one of the oldest chocolate brands in France and known for its powdered drinking chocolate in an orange box, is still made on its historic site in Blois; the former factory and its owner's house are partly listed as historic monuments.

Eating out centres on the lower town, around Place Louis XII and the streets below the château, where restaurants and cafés serve lunch menus and regional dishes with local wine. Each autumn the wine fair brings growers to town.