Toulouse

The Garonne plain has clay and no building stone, so Toulouse was built in brick, and the colour it fires to gives the city its name, la ville rose, shifting from pink to orange as the light moves. Saint-Sernin, begun about 1080 on the pilgrimage road to Compostela, is one of the largest surviving Romanesque churches in Europe, with a five-tier octagonal tower. The Jacobins church holds a single column fanning into twenty-two ribs, called the palm tree. Toulouse built the Caravelle and Concorde and remains the centre of European aerospace, with Airbus assembly lines on the edge of the city.

History

Tolosa enters history in the 2nd century BC as a Roman military outpost, and under Augustus the Romans moved the town from its hilltop oppidum down to the banks of the Garonne, better suited to trade; Saturnin, its first bishop, was martyred around 250, and in the 5th century Toulouse became a major city and for a time the capital of the Visigothic kingdom, until the Franks under Clovis took it in 507. Charlemagne created the county of Toulouse in 778, which grew virtually independent; its counts kept troubadours at court, and in 1152 the townspeople won broad self-government under consuls called capitouls, while the Bazacle mills on the Garonne are recorded as Europe's first joint-stock company. The Albigensian Crusade of 1209-1229 ended the county's independence, and Saint Dominic founded the Dominican order here in 1215; Toulouse passed to the crown in 1271, and the Consistori del Gay Saber, founded in 1323 to keep up the troubadours' art, is considered the oldest literary society in Europe. The Great Fire of 1463 ravaged the city for fifteen days, after which the capitouls favoured brick over wood and cob, and the trade in woad, then the only blue dye in Europe, brought a golden age of Renaissance mansions until the Wars of Religion; the Canal du Midi, begun in 1666 and completed in 1681, linked the city to the Mediterranean (Wikipedia, Toulouse).

What's there

• Saint-Sernin - one of the largest Romanesque churches in Europe, with its brick tower.
• The Jacobins palm - a single column fanning into twenty-two vault ribs.
• The pink brick city - facades changing colour through the day.
• The aerospace works - Airbus lines and the Aeroscopia museum on the outskirts.

When to go

April to June and September to October; July and August are very hot on the plain. Airbus factory tours need booking well ahead with identity documents.

Practical notes

Factory tours require advance booking and photo ID, and sell out. Summer heat is heavy. The city centre is large and the main sights are spread out.

Nearby

The Cite de l'Espace is on the eastern edge; the Canal du Midi starts here.

Key facts