The Rue Colbert runs east from the Rue Nationale to the cathedral and is the most concentrated restaurant street in Tours. It also has the densest cluster of half-timbered houses east of the Place Plumereau. A handful of antique shops and bookbinders survive alongside the bistrots, giving it more character than the purely tourist-oriented lanes around Plumereau.
Look up as you walk: the upper storeys preserve a remarkable collection of 15th- and 16th-century timber framing, much of it intricately carved. The street is also where Joan of Arc, then 17, was fitted with armour by a Tours blacksmith before riding to relieve the siege of Orléans in 1429 — a plaque at number 39 marks the supposed workshop.