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Origin and history

Hotel Binet is a private hotel located at 10 rue Paul-Louis-Courier (formerly rue des Carmes), in the Old Towers district. Built in the second half of the 15th century for Jacques Binet, it is profoundly redesigned in the 16th and early 17th centuries. Its architecture combines late Gothic elements (such as the polygonal turret with screw staircase) and Renaissance additions, including a wooden gallery and adorned fireplaces.

The hotel is associated with the Binet family, notable in Tours: Jérôme Binet, mayor in 1600, makes major changes. His son Jacques Binet, artillery lieutenant, inherits with his half brother Hierosm II. A fireplace on the first floor, painted between 1620 and 1630 by Jérémie Le Pileur, depicts Daniel poisoning the dragon, a biblical deuterocanonic scene. The hotel then passed into the hands of bourgeois families (Girollet, Roze, Mégessier) until the 18th century.

Partially ranked in 1927 for its gallery and wooden stairs, Hotel Binet is fully protected by a decree of 18 January 2023, covering all the built and unbuilt elements (courtyard, garden). Its history reflects the social ascent of the Touranga elites, combining municipal functions, matrimonial alliances and architectural heritage.

Archaeological sources (Bosseboeuf, 1913) point to missing inscriptions, as a tribute to Marguerite d'Angoulême on a fireplace, linking the hotel to the courtyard of Navarre. The changes of the 17th and 18th centuries (portal, baluster staircases, elevations) illustrate the evolution of the tastes and uses of an urban hotel under the Old Regime.

Today, the Binet Hotel bears witness to the turret civil architecture, between medieval tradition and Renaissance innovations, while embodying the economic and political power of its successive owners, from royal officers to 18th century financiers.

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