Psalette cloister: when Tours used to sing
And also
The tops
To the North of cathedral Saint-Gatien, we are now in the Psalette cloister.
We have a ground floor, an inner courtyard, a Renaissance tower staircase (we have the same one in the castle of Blois).
In 1460, canon Raoul Segaler raised the Western wing, a gallery with a huge room (where monks gathered in order to work) on the first floor.
In the 15th and 16th centuries, the other part of the cloister was built.
Architect Martin François (who worked on cathedral of Tours building works) managed the construction. They finished with the building of the Northern and Eastern galleries, in Gothic style.
By the way, it was in this Eastern gallery that choirboys and their teacher used to gather: it's the psalette, which means choral!
Then, they fit a small chapel to the North-East, decorated with frescos representing the massacre of the Innocents. The Western wing was added in the middle of the 19th century.