Qibla direction in Tours

How to face the Qibla in Tours

Stand where you will pray and find north first. Then turn towards east and move a further 25.8° towards south: the result is the bearing of 115.8°. A small error of a few degrees is forgiven by most scholars, but aiming simply at east would leave you about 26° off.

Facing the Qibla is a condition of the prayer. Whoever prays inside the Sacred Mosque faces the Kaaba itself; whoever is far away, as in Tours, faces its direction and makes a sincere effort to be accurate. Any of the mosques of Tours is a handy reference, because the prayer rows were aligned when it was built. Once you know the direction at home, a discreet mark on the wall saves you from checking again.

Why a flat map shows a different direction

A straight line drawn on a flat (Mercator) map from Tours to Mecca points to 129.3° (south-east), 13.5° away from the correct 115.8°. That map line is a rhumb line: it keeps the same compass heading all the way, but it is 30 km longer than the true shortest route. The Qibla follows the great circle, the shortest path on the curved Earth, which is why the bearing differs.

How is the figure of 115.8° obtained? From the coordinates of Tours (47.3948° N, 0.7040° E) and of the Kaaba (21.4225° N, 39.8262° E), spherical trigonometry gives the starting bearing of the great circle joining them. Mosque architects and astronomical Qibla tables rely on exactly the same calculation.

Distance from Tours to Mecca and Medina

Mecca is 4,530 km from Tours as the crow flies, and Medina, the city of the Prophet ﷺ, is 4,264 km away. A direct flight would take roughly 5 h 50 min, although most pilgrims from Tours connect through Jeddah or Medina airport.

Clocks in Tours run 2 hours behind Mecca in winter and 1 hour behind Mecca in summer, because of daylight saving time. Prayer times, however, depend on the sun at your own location, so always use the prayer times of Tours rather than those of Mecca.

Finding the Qibla with the sun in Tours

On 263 days of 2027, the sun passes exactly through the Qibla direction of Tours while it is well above the horizon. At that moment, facing the sun means facing Mecca. The effect is most frequent in March (31 days); for example, on 15 February 2027 it happens at 08:45 local time.

On 66 days the sun stands exactly opposite the Qibla: then the shadow of any vertical object, a pole, a door frame or a plumb line, points straight towards Mecca. This is most frequent in June (30 days), for instance on 1 June 2027 at 20:56.

Twice a year the sun passes directly over the Kaaba, on 28 May 2027 and 16 July 2027. Both moments are in daylight in Tours: at 11:18 and 11:27 local time, face the sun and you face the Qibla exactly, anywhere in the city.

Tours compared with other cities

Compared with Paris, 203 km away, the Qibla in Tours is turned 3.3° further anticlockwise (115.8° against 119.2°), and Mecca is 33 km farther away. The nearest city with its own Qibla page, Le Mans (77 km), prays towards 115.9°, a difference of 0.1°.

Across the 37 cities in France on this site, the Qibla ranges from 111.4° in Brest, Brittany Region, France to 125.3° in Strasbourg, a spread of 13.8°. That is too large to use one national direction, so each city has its own bearing.

See all cities on the Qibla page for France.

Qibla in cities near Tours

• Le Mans115.9° · 77 km
• Angers114.6° · 95 km
• Orléans, Centre-Val de Loire, France117.7° · 106 km
• Nantes113.3° · 171 km
• Limoges114.7° · 178 km
• Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines118.7° · 182 km