Walking in Poitiers

POITIERS, 2000 years of history

Aptly called the “City of a hundred bell towers”, the town centre of Poitiers includes 78 monuments protected by Historic Heritage legislation. Imposing monuments and Romanesque churches, picturesque medieval streets and half-timbered houses, 19th century boulevards and contemporary architecture: each period of history has left its mark upon the town...

Founded in antiquity on a rocky promontory dominating the Seuil du Poitou between the Boivre and Clain rivers, the ancient Roman city of Lemonum became the capital of the Pictons. Over the centuries Poitiers developed around a grid of streets the outlines of which can still be seen in the town centre today. Walls were built around the city after it fell victim to several Barbarian invasions.

In the 4th century, Christianity entered the Poitou region: the Saint-Jean Baptistery in Poitiers is considered to be the oldest Christian monument in Europe.

In the collective imagination Poitiers is immediately associated with the Great Battles against the Visigoths and the Arabs, evoked by the famous names of Clovis, King of the Francs, and Charles Martel.

Many other exceptional figures, whose footsteps can easily be retraced in the prestigious heritage of the city, have marked Poitiers for posterity...

- Sainte Radegonde, who founded the first feminine monastery in Poitiers, the Sainte-Croix Abbey; - Sainte-Hilaire, whose tomb can still be found today in the church of the same name; - the very famous line of the Counts of Poitou and the Dukes of Aquitaine, with the medieval poet who invented courtly love, Guillaume “the Troubadour”; and his daughter the queen so dear to the hearts of the poitevins, Eleanor of Aquitaine, whose life is still written in the streets of Poitiers and today's court house, the former residence of the Counts of Poitou and the Dukes of Aquitaine...

The imposing "Salle des Pas Perdus" of this same monument has witnessed many great trials which are also key events in the history of Poitiers, even in the history of France: the trial of the Knights Templar in the 14th century, the Possessed of Loudun, Joan of Arc interrogated by the theologians in 1429...

Poitiers underwent major urban changes in the 18th and 19th centuries: the laying out of the Grand Boulevards, the Parc de Blossac, and Haussmann-style thoroughfares connecting for example the City Hall to the Prefecture