Place Plumereau and the old town

The Place Plumereau is the centre of Vieux Tours and one of the best-preserved half-timbered squares in France: tall houses with exposed oak frames and slate roofs on all four sides, and terraces filling the middle of the square from mid-morning. The frame everyone takes is from the south-west corner, where the timber and the white tuffeau stone alternate down the whole side.

The better sessions are one street away. The Rue du Grand Marché, the Rue Briçonnet and the little Place Saint-Pierre-le-Puellier give the same fifteenth-century timber without the tables, and they are narrow enough that you work in soft light bounced between the facades. The Tour Charlemagne and the Tour de l'Horloge, the two surviving towers of the old basilica, are five minutes away and give height in a wide frame.

Morning is the window. The terraces are laid out but empty before about ten, the square is quiet, and the low sun comes down the streets rather than over the roofs. From lunchtime the square is a busy café scene and stays that way into the night; that is a different photograph, not a worse one, but it is not a portrait background.

The cobbles are large, uneven and rounded, which matters for heels and for anyone walking backwards with a camera. This is also the student nightlife quarter of Tours, so early morning at weekends is quiet in a way late evening never is.