SAUMUR, a town of France, at the head of an arrondissement in the department of Maine-et-Loire, is situated on an island and on the left bank of the Loire, 38 miles south-west of Tours, and 27 miles south-east of Angers. A large metal bridge connects the Tours-Angers railway with that of Montreuil-Bellay by which Saumur communicates with Poitiers and Niort. Two stone bridges (755 and 905 feet long) also unite the town on the island with the two banks of the river. Several of the Saumur churches are interesting. St Pierre, of the 12th century, has a 17th-century façade and a Renaissance nave; and Notre Dame of Nantilly (often visited by Louis XI.) has a remarkable though greatly damaged façade, a doorway and choir of the 12th century, and a nave of the 11th. Both these churches contain curious tapestries, and in the latter, fixed in the wall, is the copper cross of Gilles de Tyr, keeper of the seals to St Louis. St Jean is a charming little building in the Angevine Gothic style. Notre Dame of Ardiliers, of the 16th century, was enlarged in the following century by Richelieu and Madame de Montespan. The town-house is an elegant 16th-century edifice; and the whole town is rich in graceful and interesting examples of the best period of French domestic architecture. The castle, built between the 11th century and the 13th, and remodelled in the 16th, is used as an arsenal and powder magazine. There is also an interesting almshouse, with its chambers in part dug out in the rock. The cavalry school, founded in 1768, and after various interruptions reorganized in 1824 and 1853, has at the present time (1886) 400 pupils, of whom 125 are officers. Other establishments are a public library, a museum of natural history and local Roman and Celtic antiquities, a horticultural ...