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Bourges
Photo: sybarite48, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons

City · Centre–Val de Loire · Altitude 141 m

Bourges

A Gothic cathedral with no transept and five great portals, a merchant’s palace, and market gardens on the marshes at the edge of town.

Why go

Bourges has one of the greatest Gothic cathedrals in France, and almost nobody outside France has heard of it. That is the point. The interior is a single soaring space without a transept, walled with thirteenth-century glass, and the old streets around it are lined with timber-framed houses and the palace of Jacques Cœur, the merchant who financed a king. Then walk ten minutes and you are among the allotment gardens of the marshes, which feel like the countryside.

History

Before Rome there was Avaricum, chief town of the Bituriges, a Gaulish people. In 52 BC, during the Gallic Wars, its inhabitants refused to burn it as part of Vercingetorix’s scorched-earth strategy; Caesar besieged and took it all the same, and almost all its inhabitants were killed. The Roman town that followed left walls whose ruins can still be seen, and Bourges became one of the earliest Christian centres of Gaul.

Building of the present cathedral began in 1195 under Archbishop Henri de Sully, and the bulk of it rose over the next few decades; it was consecrated in 1324. In 1360 Bourges became capital of the duchy of Berry, given to Jean de Berry, son of King John the Good and one of the great art patrons of the Middle Ages.

During the Hundred Years’ War the future Charles VII took refuge here; his enemies mocked him as the ‘king of Bourges'. His son, the future Louis XI, was born in the archbishops’ palace in 1423, and in 1438 Charles issued the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, asserting the French Church’s independence from Rome. The city’s great merchant, Jacques Cœur, became the king’s financier; in 1443 he bought the land for a magnificent town house, but he fell from grace in 1451 and was imprisoned before it was finished.

A great fire in 1487 destroyed a third of the town and began a long decline. The Renaissance still left fine mansions such as the Hôtel Lallemant, and in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Bourges became a centre of arms manufacturing. In 1992 the cathedral was inscribed by UNESCO, and since 1977 the Printemps de Bourges has filled the streets with music each spring.

UNESCO World Heritage: Bourges Cathedral (1992)

What to see

Saint-Étienne cathedral

Five portals open into five aisles, and the central one shows a Last Judgement of extraordinary detail. Inside, with no transept to break it, the nave runs in one unbroken sweep to the apse, lit by a large collection of thirteenth-century stained glass. The lower church beneath the choir, built to cope with the slope of the ground, is worth seeing too.

Palais Jacques-Cœur

Built for the king’s financier in the 1440s and 1450s, this is one of the finest civic buildings of fifteenth-century France. Look for the carved hearts and scallop shells, a pun on his name, and the playful sculpted figures peering from false windows.

The old town

Rue Bourbonnoux, the streets around the cathedral and the place Gordaine are lined with timber-framed houses, rebuilt after the great fires of the fifteenth century. Renaissance mansions such as the Hôtel Lallemant, a jewel of the early French Renaissance, and the Hôtel Cujas, home of the Berry museum, show the town’s later wealth.

Archbishops’ garden

Beside the seventeenth-century archbishops’ palace, now the old town hall, a formal French garden traditionally attributed to Le Nôtre stretches out behind the cathedral apse. It offers the best view of the building’s flying buttresses and chapels, especially in the late-afternoon light, and a calm bench to look from.

The marshes

On the edge of the centre, the wetlands of the Yèvre and the Voiselle are divided into a patchwork of small plots, now mostly kitchen gardens kept for pleasure, which urban growth has largely left alone. Walk the paths on a summer evening, a few minutes from the cathedral.

Bourges
Photo: Benjamin Smith, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

Climate

Météo-France normals 1991-2020, station Bourges (161 m, 3.8 km away). Sunshine: Bourges station (3.8 km).

0°10°20°30°791316202426262217118JFMAMJJASOND
JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
High °C7.48.913.116.320.123.826.226.222.117.211.27.9
Low °C1.61.43.75.89.513.014.814.711.38.54.62.2
Rain (mm)585153627658645457746967
Rain days12101010118888101212
Sunshine (h)66941561862162272492401941277760

When to go →

Timeline

  1. 52 BC Caesar besieges and takes Avaricum
  2. 1195 Building of the Gothic cathedral begins
  3. 1324 Cathedral consecrated
  4. 1360 Bourges becomes capital of the duchy of Berry
  5. 1438 Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges
  6. 1443 Jacques Cœur buys the land for his palace
  7. 1487 A fire destroys a third of the town
  8. 1992 Cathedral inscribed by UNESCO

Uncertain or disputed

  • The completion date of the cathedral’s main structure is given variously as 1230 or 1255; we say ‘the next few decades'.
  • Sources disagree on when the Palais Jacques-Cœur was finished: 1453 in most accounts, though one dates the house to the late fifteenth century.
  • The garden is traditionally attributed to Le Nôtre; the attribution is not documented.

Crowds: Rarely crowded. The town is busiest during the Printemps de Bourges festival in April and on summer evenings; the rest of the year it is calm, and weekday mornings in the cathedral are almost private. (editorial judgement)

Protected food & drink from here

AOP and IGP products whose official area includes this commune (INAO). Regional food: AOP & IGP →

Cheese

  • Chavignol ou Crottin de Chavignol AOP · goat's cheese

Meat & charcuterie

  • Volailles du Berry IGP · poultry

Wine

  • Val de Loire IGP

Festivals within 15 km

From the Ministry of Culture’s national list; it gives a season, not dates.

FestivalDisciplineSeason
Bourges Contemporain BourgesVisual & digital arts21 Jun – 5 Sep
Bourges Humour et vin BourgesTheatre, dance & street arts6 Sep – 31 Dec
BulleBerry BourgesBooks & comics6 Sep – 31 Dec
Cosmic Trip Festival BourgesMusic1 Jan – 20 Jun
L'Automne baroque de Bourges BourgesMusic6 Sep – 31 Dec
L'automne de Morthomiers MorthomiersMusic6 Sep – 31 Dec
La Note et les PLanches Saint-Florent-sur-CherTheatre, dance & street arts6 Sep – 31 Dec
Le Printemps de Bourges Crédit Mutuel BourgesMusic1 Jan – 20 Jun
Les folies berruyères BourgesMusic6 Sep – 31 Dec
Les très riches heures de l'orgue en Berry BourgesMusic21 Jun – 5 Sep
Récréations BourgesBooks & comics21 Jun – 5 Sep
Salon du Livre de Saint-Doulchard Saint-DoulchardBooks & comics6 Sep – 31 Dec
Un été à Bourges BourgesMusic21 Jun – 5 Sep

Also in this part of France

2h17 Village · Burgundy–Franche-Comté Vézelay One street climbing a Burgundian hill to a Romanesque basilica where, on the summer solstice, sunlight lays a path of light down the nave. 1h30 Town · Centre–Val de Loire Amboise A royal château over the Loire, the manor where Leonardo da Vinci spent his last three years, and a chapel that holds what may be his bones. 0h40 Town · Île-de-France (beyond Paris) Fontainebleau Seven centuries of French kings in one palace, wrapped in a vast forest of sandstone boulders, oaks and painters’ viewpoints. 2h29 Town · Centre–Val de Loire Chinon A long royal fortress above the Vienne where Henry II died and Joan of Arc met her king, a slate-roofed old town and red wine from cabernet franc.

Sources

Original text. Train times computed from SNCF timetables (ODbL); climate Météo-France; products INAO; festivals Ministry of Culture. Methodology.