SPOTLIGHT ON TOULOUSE

MAGICAL TOULOUSE - THE PINK CITY

“We take photos as a return ticket to a moment otherwise gone” – Katie Thurmes

Often, when planning a trip to France from the UK, we tended to stick around the golden coastline of Normandy with ‘wishes’ in the near future to travel all of La Belle France, after all there’s a lot to discover. Since the pandemic, we have of course stayed close to home, albeit a temporary home in the south west but spent many an evening talking about travel and where we would love to visit when the world finally opens up again. Toulouse came up in our planning conversations several times as a possibility as we were intrigued by the ‘Pink City’ title.

Once we were hooked on the sunny skies and sunflower fields of the Charente, our appetite to discover the rest of France was whetted, no matter how long the road to travel would be!

“Of course one should not drink much, but often.” — Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Our post pandemic bucket list also grew substantially when we started house hunting again in the summer of 2021. By then, we were prepared to look at anything, anywhere that took our fancy. No limits. We had finally put to bed the need to stay close to the ferries in order to get home to Blighty, and by doing so, we felt free. Every French city, town and village became our possible future home!

Toulouse seems a lifetime away from the UK or Normandy and it’s easy to feel it would be difficult to get there and back in good time. Toulouse is nearly 840 miles from Caen and takes around 8 hours by road! By train, just four hours from Paris, by TGV. France is indeed vast, so there’s no getting away from the fact that nipping back to the UK, for ‘a taste of home’ wouldn’t be easy, but I think Brexit has made that super tough anyway!

Toulouse is an exciting city, the capital of France’s southern Occitanie region, bisected by the Garonne riverand sitting near the Spanish border. It is known as La Ville Rose (‘The Pink City’) due to the terracotta bricks used in many of its buildings. Its 17th-century Canal du Midi links the Garonne to the Mediterranean Sea, and can be travelled by boat, bike or on foot.

The city of Toulouse, located on the Garonne plain in the heart of southwest France, halfway between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, is more important now than it has been for many centuries. Since 2016, the fourth-largest city in France has become the capital of the second largest region of France, the new region of “Occitanie”, which stretches from the Rhone in the east to within 60 miles of the Atlantic coast in the west. Modern Occitania is similar in extent to the great County of Toulouse, which, from the 9th century until the end of the 13th was an independent territory of southwest France. Governed first by the Counts of Toulouse from the 12th century onwards, the city was later run by a council of administrators, known as the ‘Capitulaires’: the council or parliament building was the Capitole, a building that stood close by what is now recognised as the centre point of modern Toulouse, the great Place du Capitole, one of the finest urban piazzas anywhere in the world.

From the 14th to the 16th century, Toulouse became a very wealthy city, based on an industry that later on vanished entirely, the production of ‘pastel’, or in English, ‘woad’. Known since prehistoric times, pastel was a highly prized and expensive pigment, capable of producing brilliant blues; and until it was replaced by imported indigo, which was cheaper and easier to produce, the cultivation and transformation of pastel was a boom industry of international importance in and around the city of Toulouse. With the decline of the pastel industry, Toulouse’s fortunes slumped. However, it still remained very much a regional capital, being the largest city for at least 200 miles in any direction, with the exception of its eternal rival in southwest France, Bordeaux.

Since the middle of the 20th century, Toulouse has once again established itself as a major industrial player, this time as capital of the French and European aerospace industry. The Toulouse-Blagnac airport complex was the birthplace of the Anglo-French supersonic jetliner Concorde, and today Blagnac is the headquarters and main manufacturing plant of the European consortium, Airbus. It is here, for instance, that the giant Airbus A380 super jumbos are assembled, using parts produced in facilities in several different countries of Europe.

WHAT TO SEE AND DO IN TOULOUSE?

1. Cite de l’Espace – A fantastic space museum on the city’s eastern outskirts.

2. Basilique St-Sernin – A well-preserved Romanesque edifice built from golden and rose stone.

3. Couvent des Jacobins – An elegant, ecclesiastical structure of the Dominican order.

4. Place du Capitole – Toulouse’s magnificent main square is the city’s literal and metaphorical heart.

5. Musee des Augustins – Located within a former Augustinian monastery, this fine-arts museum spans the Roman era through to the early 20th century.

6. Capitole – On the eastern side of Place du Capitole is the 128m-long facade of the Capitole, Toulouse’s city hall.

7. Fondation Bemberg – A luxurious museum of fine arts and historic design.

À vaillant coeur rien d’impossible. -Jacques Cœur

Cite de l’Espace

Musee des Augustins

Hotel d’Assezat

Jardin des Plantes 8. Musee St- Raymond – Toulouse in 4th century nudes,Venuses and Corinthian columns.

9. Hotel d’Assezat – Toulouse boasts more than 50 ‘hotels particuliers’ – private mansions built for the city’snobility in the 16th and 17th century.

10. Musee Paul Dupuy – Browse a treasure trove of religious art, pharmaceutical items and impressive clocks.

11. Aeroscopia – The aviation museum built on the very spot the A380 Airbus was first completed.

12. Eglise Notre-Dame de la Dalbade – This Catholic church is a worthy stop on any walking tour of Toulouse.

13. Jardin des Plantes – These 200-year-old sculpted gardens are a refreshing place to take a stroll and escape the city air.

14. Chateau d’Eau – The 19th century brick tower once pumped fresh water around Toulouse and is an attraction for contemporary photography displays.

Oh, and don’t forget the food of Toulouse, it is France after all; the patisseries and chocolatiers here are typically full of delicious treats. Specialities of Toulouse include crisp, caramelised, biscuits called ‘croquants’, ‘caraque’ a vibrant green chocolate tart and ‘fénétra’ a decadent cake made with marzipan, meringue and candied lemon.

THE LOCAL DISHES YOU HAVE TO TRY WHEN YOU’RE IN TOULOUSE:

Cassoulet.

Made with the Toulouse sausage! A famous export from the south of France, the Toulouse sausage or Saucisse de Toulouse, as it is known in its native language – is a fresh sausage with a high pork content and generous seasoning.

• It would be sacrilege to be in Toulouse and not try the cassoulet. But also try: • Foie gras d’oie. • Canard confit. • Tarte aux noix. • Garbure. • La bougnette. • Cachou. • The violet.

Garbure Tarte aux Noix

Office de Tourisme de Toulouse

Donjon du Capitole Square Charles de Gaulle

https://www.toulouse-tourisme.com/