Tournai

Beautiful small town next to France

Tournai Must-Sees

This 2000 year old town is extremely proud of its survival through a long and vast history as well as its continued development and growth. More recently, Tournai is the tourist and cultural capital of a region in the middle of a vast network of roads, rivers, railways and even air routes.

Surrounded by ibeautiful monuments and precious traces of 2000 years of history, the Cité des Cinq Clochers (the town of the five towers) welcomes and invites you to its year-round festivities, which brings life  and excited energy through this exceptional and quaint spot of Picardy, at the borders of the Walloon provinces of Belgium.

Although Tournai sometimes seems to be lost in the centuries and in the confines of Belgium, it has had a profound impact on Belgian and world cultures. You can not stop before an antiquarian's shop window without being attracted by the blue, gold or monochrome of classic Tournai porcelain, or visit a large art museum  without admiring a painting by Roger de le Pasture, one of Tournai's most valuable treasures along with Manet, Argenteuil.

In Tournai, 2000 years of history awaits you as you relive centuries of magnificent art and glory. It's the city of the Kings : Childeric, Clovis, Philippe Auguste, Louis IX, Henry VIII, Charles V, Louis XIV, each of who have left traces of their glorious reigns in its institutions and stones. For more see Tournai Highlights below.

Tournai was also featured in Kayak Trip Ideas: Off The Path...In Europe!

" You have seen Notre Dame, so head over to Belgium and check out a structure so unusual it has been profiled in art history books for decades. Cathedral Notre-Dame in Tournai, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has a Romanesque nave and transept that was built in the 12th Century. Attached to it is a Gothic style choir that was added a century later. This ancient town is the birthplace of Covis, founder of the Merovingian dynasty that ruled for centuries. After some sightseeing head to Charles Quint on the city's Grand Place and see what French cuisine looks like when subjected to an Italian sensibility. Consider staying outside town at the Le Panoramique-Floreal, high atop Mount St. Aubert."