Angers sits on the banks of the Maine river, halfway between Tours and Nantes, and it is one of the most rewarding cities in the Loire Valley. The medieval château of the Dukes of Anjou is the centrepiece — a fortress of seventeen towers enclosing the greatest medieval tapestry in the world, the 14th-century Tapestry of the Apocalypse — but Angers has more depth than a single monument.
The city is the historic capital of Anjou and a stronghold of Plantagenet Gothic architecture. The cathedral, the abbey church of Saint-Serge, and the 12th-century hospital of Saint-Jean all bear the Angevin hallmark: wide, light-filled interiors with elegantly ribbed vaulting that seems almost impossibly airy for its age. In the former hospital, Jean Lurçat's monumental 20th-century tapestry series Le Chant du Monde — conceived as a modern answer to the Apocalypse tapestry — fills the medieval vaults with colour and energy.
Angers is a lively university city with a compact, walkable old town. The streets around the cathedral and Place Sainte-Croix contain several exceptional medieval timber-framed buildings, including the Maison d'Adam, one of the finest Gothic half-timbered houses in France. It is not a city that shows off, but it repays a careful look.