At the time construction began, the church was located at the south end of the bridge over the river Loire, on the road from Paris to the south-west of France.

with financial assistance from Charles VII and the Duke of Brittany Jean V. In 1484 the lower portals were completed.

The lower walls of the towers and the central block of the facade up to the triangular fronton date were built in sober Romanesque style, then, along with the buttresses, were covered with much more ornate and dense Flamboyant decoration.

[7] The sides of the cathedral are reinforced with massive flying buttresses, capped with spires to give them additional weight.

The top sections of the two towers, which completed the structures, with heights of 69 and 70 meters, are early examples of French Renaissance architecture.

[7] The nave has the traditional three levels; a gallery on the ground floor with large pillars supporting the ribs of the vaulted ceiling; a mid-level gallery, or triforium, with windows; and an upper level, or clerestory, with tall windows filling the upper walls with glass.

The nave has a height of 29 meters, but a width less than many cathedrals, probably due to the re-use of an earlier Romanesque foundation.

[7] The south transept also has a rose window, and contains the original case of the 16th century organ, It was donated by Martin de Beaune, and built by Barnabé Delanoue.

[7] The nave contains a monumental tomb, that of the two children of King Charles VIII of France and Anne of Brittany, who died as infants.

It was made in 1506 by Guillaume Regnault or Girolamo da Fiesole, and originally was located in the church of St. Martin, and was moved to the cathedral after the French Revolution.

In the 13th century, the artists working on Tours Cathedral launched a small revolution in the design of stained glass windows.

This served the purpose of bringing a much greater quantity of light into the interior, and also highlighted the chosen subjects, which otherwise were lost among hundreds of other images.

where the rose was installed, problems of stability appeared, and it had to be reinforced by a vertical stone bar behind the window, dividing it in two, and by additional buttresses on the exterior.

The other three bells are:[10] To the north of the cathedral is a small cloister, built during the Renaissance, known as the cloître de la Psalette, in reference to its function as a school where the chanting of psalms was taught.

It also has a scriptorium, where manuscripts were created, which was built in 1520, and is served by a stairway; and a library with a vaulted ceiling, where several frescoes from the 13th and 14th centuries can be seen.

[11] This was an early appearance of the French Renaissance style, which had recently been introduced in the stairway the Chateau of Blois in the nearby Loire Valley.

[7] To the south of the cathedral is the former archbishop's palace, built in the early 18th century, which has now become the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours.