Toulouse

Geographical setting and environment

Toulouse is located in south-western France, in the northern part of the Haute-Garonne department, on the Garonne River. It lies within the broad lowland corridor between the Pyrenees to the south and the Massif Central to the north-east, at the junction of the Aquitaine Basin and the plains of Languedoc. The city is surrounded by the gently rolling hills of the Lauragais and other neighbouring regions, while the Pyrenees rise about 80 km (50 mi) to the south. This geographical setting has made Toulouse a natural crossroads between the Atlantic and Mediterranean regions and between the major territories of south-western France.

The city developed within a fertile agricultural region, whose plains and surrounding hills have traditionally supported cereal cultivation and supplied its urban population. Since antiquity, Toulouse has been the principal urban centre of a large agricultural hinterland. In the Roman period, the city covered more than 90 hectares and was surrounded by a dense network of rural estates occupying the surrounding plains. Throughout its history, Toulouse has served as a major market and distribution centre for the region's agricultural production. The importance of grain in the local economy is reflected in the history of the Bazacle mills, which harnessed the Garonne's water power, and in the long-standing presence of grain markets in the city.

The relative scarcity of suitable building stone in the surrounding area, in contrast with the availability of clay, contributed to the widespread use of brick in the city's architecture.

Hydrography

The canal network

The construction of the Canal du Midi in the seventeenth century extended these commercial possibilities eastwards. Built between 1667 and 1694, the canal connected Toulouse with the Mediterranean through the Lauragais and the Languedoc plain, crossing the watershed at the Seuil de Naurouze. It was conceived as part of a wider project to link the Mediterranean and Atlantic, although the connection to the Atlantic still depended on navigation along the Garonne. The canal carried passengers, mail and goods, including grain, wine, timber and coal, and contributed to the development of Toulouse's port facilities. The port of Saint-Étienne became an important centre for the grain trade and one of the city's principal river gateways.

Further improvements strengthened this network. The Canal de Brienne, opened in 1776, linked the Garonne upstream of the Bazacle weir to the Canal du Midi at the Bassin de l'Embouchure, allowing boats to avoid the difficult passage across the weir. In the nineteenth century, the construction of the Canal latéral à la Garonne, begun in 1838 and opened along its full route in 1856, provided a more reliable navigable connection between Toulouse and Bordeaux. Together, the canals and the river formed an extensive waterway system linking the Mediterranean and Atlantic basins. However, the limitations of Garonne navigation and the growing competition from the railway during the nineteenth century restricted its economic potential.

Besides the Garonne, the city is traversed by the Canal de Brienne, the Canal du Midi and the Canal latéral à la Garonne, as well as the rivers Touch and Hers-Mort.

Floods and flood defences

The Garonne has also had a major influence on the city's urban development because of its recurrent floods. Before the construction of modern flood defences, the river regularly inundated the low-lying districts along its banks. Protective works were gradually built from at least the sixteenth century onwards, particularly around Saint-Cyprien on the left bank and along the quays on the right bank. These included the brick flood wall of Saint-Cyprien, as well as embankments and structures incorporated into the urban fabric. Some historic buildings, notably the Hôtel-Dieu Saint-Jacques and the former hospital buildings of La Grave, also form part of the city's flood-protection system.

The catastrophic flood of June 1875, which killed 209 people in Toulouse, destroyed 1,140 houses and left 25,000 people homeless, marked a turning point in the city's efforts to control the river. Further flood defences were built, particularly after the major flood of February 1952. Today, the Garonne is largely contained within an extensive system of embankments and flood walls through the city, although exceptional floods remain a significant risk.

Climate

Toulouse has a four-season humid subtropical climate (Cfa in the Köppen climate classification). Too much precipitation during the summer months prevents the city from being classified in the Mediterranean climate zone.

Early history

The Garonne Valley was a central point for trade between the Pyrenees, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic since at least the Iron Age. The historical name of the city, Tolosa (Τολῶσσα in Greek, and of its inhabitants, the Tolosates, first recorded in the 2nd century BC), is of unknown meaning or origin, possibly from Aquitanian or Iberian, but it has also been connected to the name of the Gaulish Volcae Tectosages, or to the same root as Irish tulach or Welsh twlch, (little hill).

County of Toulouse

Charlemagne had created the county of Toulouse in 778 to guard the border of Muslim Spain, but the disintegration of the kingdom of Aquitaine and the weakness of royal power in the following centuries led to the de facto independence of the county of Toulouse and many provinces.

In the 11th and 12th centuries, southern France was still steeped in Latin culture. Unlike the north of France, justice followed written Roman law and the nobles were highly educated. This was the time of the troubadours who wrote their poetry in Occitan (called "Provençal" at the time), then one of the most sophisticated languages in Europe. Like the other great lords of the Midi, the counts of Toulouse maintained and favoured these poets, this is how Count Raymond V employed for some time the famous Bernard de Ventadour, expert in singing courtly love.

In 1096, Raymond IV, Count of Toulouse, left with his army at the call of the Pope Urban II to join the First Crusade, of which he was one of the main leaders. This exodus of its warriors and nobles, reinforced by the creation of the faraway County of Tripoli by Raymond IV at the beginning of the 12th century, weakened the city militarily as well as the ascendancy that its counts had over it. The Duke William IX of Aquitaine challenged the possession of the city on the grounds that it should have been inherited by his wife Philippa (daughter of the previous count of Toulouse, whereas Raymond IV was only his brother). More than 50 years later his granddaughter Eleanor of Aquitaine still claimed the inheritance in vain.

In the 12th century the city left its Roman limits and a new district developed around the church of Saint-Sernin: the Bourg. The church of Saint-Sernin was famous and revered for its many relics, and the chapter of its canons, which had possessions as far away as Spain, was powerful enough to free itself from the control of the bishop of Toulouse. This dissent had important local political repercussions, making the Bourg in practice a separate district from the city. In 1152, the notables of Toulouse took advantage of a weakening of the county power to obtain for their city a great autonomy, they created a municipal body of consuls, called capitouls in Toulouse, to lead the city. The Bourg, which had only a quarter of the inhabitants of Toulouse, obtained as many capitouls as the rest of the city. Economically, Toulouse, which was at the center of a large cereal-growing plain, was distinguished by its numerous mills that took advantage of the force of the Garonne, among which the Bazacle Milling Company was the first recorded European joint-stock company.

Kingdom of France

In 1271, Joan of Toulouse and her husband Alphonse of Poitiers died without heirs. Toulouse, which since the treaty of 1229 had been subordinate to the kingdom of France, no longer had a count and was annexed to the royal domain. The installation of numerous royal officers and the development of trade and crafts, which favoured the social ascension of merchants, renewed the city's elites. In 1298, King Philip the Fair greatly facilitated the possibility of ennobling the capitouls, whose council, renewed every year, was increasingly made up of rich merchants.

The first half of the 14th century was a prosperous period, despite the dismemberment in 1317 of the very large bishopric of Toulouse (which lost two thirds of its area and a large part of its income, a loss only partially compensated by its elevation to the rank of archbishopric), and the episode of the Shepherds' Crusade which brought a pogrom against Toulouse's Jewish population in 1320. In 1335, Toulouse had between 35,000 and 40,000 inhabitants.

In 1323, the Consistori del Gay Saber was created in Toulouse to preserve the lyric art of the troubadours by organizing a poetry contest; and Toulouse became the centre of Occitan literary culture for the following centuries. The Consistori is considered to be the oldest literary society in Europe, at the origin of one of the most sophisticated treatise on grammar and rhetoric of the Middle Ages, and in 1694 it was transformed into the Royal Academy of the Floral Games (Académie des Jeux Floraux), still active today, by king Louis XIV.

The 14th century also saw a significant increase in the influence of the University of Toulouse, particularly following the move of the papacy from Rome to Avignon. Many law graduates from the University of Toulouse had brilliant careers in the Avignon curia, several became cardinals and three became popes: John XXII, Innocent VI and Urban V. These powerful prelates financed the establishment of colleges in the university towns of southern France, not only Toulouse but also Montpellier, Cahors and Avignon.

The Black Death in 1348, then the Hundred Years' War caused a major crisis that lasted until the following century. Despite strong immigration, the population lost more than 10,000 inhabitants in 70 years. By 1405 Toulouse had only 19,000 people. In these hardships, the city was the key stronghold of the French defence in the south of France during the worst years of the Hundred Years' War, when the English troops from Aquitaine had taken Montauban and only Toulouse remained as an obstacle to their conquest of southern France. This military threat to the city and especially to the surrounding countryside was not conducive to its development, despite the strengthening of ties with the royalty that it entailed.

In 1369, pope Urban V attributed to the Dominican church of the Jacobins of Toulouse the bones of the Dominican theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas, perhaps to honor the city that had been the cradle of the Dominican order at the beginning of the previous century.

The political and economic situation improved by the middle of the 15th century. In 1443 King Charles VII established the second parlement of France after that of Paris. Reinforcing its place as an administrative and judicial center, the city grew richer, participating in the trade of Bordeaux wine with England, as well as cereals and textiles. A major source of income was the production and export of pastel, a blue dye made from woad.

Toulouse suffered several fires, but it was in 1463 that the Great Fire of Toulouse broke out, ravaging the city for fifteen days and destroying some two-thirds of it. After this dramatic event, Louis XI exempted its inhabitants from the taille, the main royal tax. The capitouls issued municipal decrees favouring the use of brick in buildings, rather than excessively flammable wood or cob.

In the 16th century, and until 1562, the economy of Toulouse experienced a golden age: its parlement made it the judicial capital of a large part of southern France, and the city became the first European centre for the trade in woad, the only blue dye then known in Europe which was very much in demand in the textile industry at the time. A humanist milieu developed thanks to its university and parlement, which trained and attracted intellectual elites, and to humanist prelates such as Jean de Pins, bishop of Rieux, and Cardinal Georges d'Armagnac, later archbishop of Toulouse, whose secretary was the architectural theorist Guillaume Philandrier. The jurist Jean de Boyssoné taught law at the university, while Guillaume de La Perrière, author of Le Théâtre des bons engins (1540), the earliest French emblem book, served the capitouls by writing several chronicles of the city's Annals and dedicated to them his political treatise Le Miroir politicque. The young Étienne Dolet also studied in the city in the early 1530s. The wealth generated by this culturally and economically dynamic environment is the source of the Renaissance mansions in Toulouse. In 1550 the population of the city made it the second or third largest city in France. It was estimated to have 50,000 inhabitants, a figure it would not regain until the 18th century.

In 1562, the French Wars of Religion began and Toulouse became an ultra-Catholic stronghold in a predominantly Huguenot region. The era of economic prosperity came to an end, especially since all the capitouls of that year and a large proportion of the merchants were Huguenots and had to flee the city for several years. The governor of Languedoc, Henri II de Montmorency, who had rebelled, was executed in 1632 in the Capitole in the presence of King Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu.

In 1666, Pierre-Paul Riquet started the construction of the Canal du Midi which links Toulouse to the Mediterranean Sea, and is considered one of the greatest construction works of the 17th century. Completed in 1681, the canal stimulated the economy of Toulouse by promoting the export of cereals and the import of olive oil, wine and other goods from the Mediterranean regions.

In the 18th century, Toulouse was a provincial capital that prided itself on its royal academies (the only city in France, along with Paris, to have three royal academies), but sometimes seemed far removed from the debates of ideas that agitated the Enlightenment. A famous example illustrates this backwardness of Toulouse mentalities of the time: in 1762 its powerful parlement sentenced Jean Calas to death. The philosopher Voltaire then accused the Parlement of Toulouse of religious intolerance (Calas was a Huguenot), gave the affair a European repercussion and succeeded in having the judgment of the parlement quashed by the King's Council, which did much damage to the reputation of the parlement. It was on this occasion that Voltaire published one of his major philosophical works: his famous Treatise on Tolerance.

With the French Revolution of 1789 and the reform or suppression of all royal institutions, Toulouse lost much of its power and influence: until then the capital of the vast province of Languedoc, with a parlement ruling over an even larger territory, the city then found itself simply at the head of the single small department of Haute-Garonne.

19th century

On 10 April 1814, four days after Napoleon's surrender of the French Empire to the nations of the Sixth Coalition (a fact that the two armies involved were not yet aware of), the Battle of Toulouse pitted the Hispanic-British troops of Field Marshal Wellington against the French troops of Napoleonic Marshal Soult, who, although they managed to resist, were forced to withdraw. Toulouse was thus the scene of the last Franco-British battle on French territory.

Unlike most large French cities, there was no real industrial revolution in 19th century Toulouse. The most important industries were the gunpowder factory, to meet military needs, and the tobacco factory. In 1856 the railway arrived in Toulouse and the city was modernised: the ramparts were replaced by large boulevards, and major avenues such as the rue d'Alsace-Lorraine and the rue de Metz opened up the historic centre.

In 1875, a flood of the Garonne devastated more than 1,000 houses and killed 200 people. It also destroyed all the bridges in Toulouse, except the Pont-Neuf.

20th and 21st centuries

World War I brought to Toulouse (geographically sheltered from enemy attacks) chemical industries as well as aviation workshops (Latécoère, Dewoitine), which launched the city's aeronautical construction tradition and gave birth after the war to the famous Aéropostale, a pioneering airmail company based in Toulouse and whose epics were popularised by the novels of writers such as Joseph Kessel and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (himself an Aéropostale pilot).

In the 1920s and 1930s the rise of the Toulouse population was increased by the arrival of Italians and Spaniards fleeing fascist regimes.

During the Second World War, Toulouse was in the unoccupied zone under the Vichy regime until German troops occupied it in November 1942. On 23 August 1942, the Archbishop of Toulouse, Jules-Géraud Saliège, had a pastoral letter protesting against the persecution of Jews read in all the churches of his diocese; Yad Vashem, which later recognised him as one of the Righteous Among the Nations, describes him as the first high-ranking French clergyman to protest publicly against the Vichy regime's treatment of Jews. German forces left the city on 19 August 1944, and the French Forces of the Interior completed its liberation the following day.

In the early 1960s, French repatriates from Algeria swelled the city's population.

In 1963, Toulouse was chosen to become one of the country's eight "balancing Metropolises", regaining a position among the country's major cities that it had lost in the 19th century. The French state then encouraged the city's specialisation in aeronautics and space activities, sectors that had experienced strong growth in recent decades, fueling economic and population growth.

On 21 September 2001, an explosion occurred at the AZF fertiliser factory, causing 31 deaths, about 30 seriously wounded and 2,500 light casualties. The blast measured 3.4 on the Richter scale and the explosion was heard 80 km (50 mi) away.

In March 2012, Toulouse and nearby Montauban were struck by a series of Islamist terrorist attacks carried out by Mohammed Merah, a 23-year-old who claimed to be a member of al-Qaeda. After killing three soldiers in two separate attacks on 11 and 15 March, he opened fire on 19 March outside the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school in Toulouse, killing a teacher and three children. Merah was killed by police on 22 March after a 32-hour siege of his apartment. The attacks are known as the Toulouse and Montauban shootings.

In 2016, a territorial reform made Toulouse the regional prefecture of Occitanie, the second largest region in metropolitan France, giving it a role commensurate with its past as a provincial capital among the most important in France.

Immigration

Foreign-born population in Toulouse by country of birth

Country of birth	Population (2020)
Algeria	14,152
Morocco	11,887
Spain	5,542
Tunisia	3,943
Portugal	2,983
Italy	2,386
Romania	1,415
Vietnam	1,348
Madagascar	1,346
Ivory Coast	1,198

Local politics

For much of the twentieth century, Toulouse was regarded as a stronghold of the political left, and its municipal government remained in socialist hands for several decades. This changed in 1971, when the centre-right candidate Pierre Baudis defeated the incumbent socialist mayor, Louis Bazerque. The subsequent political history of the city revealed an apparent electoral paradox: although left-wing parties continued to perform strongly in national elections in Toulouse, the municipal government was generally held by the centre-right. This contrast was particularly evident during the successive administrations of Pierre and Dominique Baudis (1971–2001), and was only briefly interrupted by the election of Socialist Pierre Cohen in 2008. The pattern has continued to shape political debate in the city, even as its electoral landscape has evolved.

Mayors

Toulouse Métropole

Toulouse Métropole is a métropole, the most integrated form of intercommunality in France, with its own tax-raising powers, grouping the city of Toulouse and part of its inner suburbs. It originated in a district of 13 communes created in 1992, which became a communauté d'agglomération of 21 communes in 2001 and a communauté urbaine in 2009, before acquiring its current status in 2015; it has comprised 37 communes since 2011. Covering 460 km² (180 sq mi), it had 841,524 inhabitants in 2023, or about 55% of the population of the Toulouse metropolitan area, many of whose outer suburbs lie outside its boundaries.

It exercises, in place of its member communes, powers over economic development, urban planning, housing, public transport, roads, water and sanitation, waste management and the environment. It is chaired by the mayor of Toulouse, Jean-Luc Moudenc.

Architectural identity: brick and stone

In 2019, Toulouse was awarded the French Ministry of Culture's Ville d'art et d'histoire (City of Art and History) label. The city has a rich architectural heritage, including Romanesque and Gothic churches, Renaissance mansions and classical civic buildings. Much of its historic centre lies within a protected area covering 256 hectares, including the Garonne River.

The city's architecture is particularly associated with brique foraine, a large, flat brick traditionally used in the region. A medieval heir to Roman brick, it retains the characteristic proportions of the Roman type, with a width two-thirds of its length. The scarcity of nearby stone quarries made stone expensive, as it had to be transported from the Pyrenees along the Garonne. Brick was therefore widely used in local construction, while stone was often reserved for architectural details. Brick and stone together have shaped the appearance of Toulouse's historic buildings and contributed to the city's familiar image as the Ville rose (Pink City).

Romanesque architecture (11th–12th c.)

The Romanesque architecture of Toulouse is best represented by the Basilica of Saint-Sernin, one of the major surviving Romanesque churches in Europe. Its construction reflects the importance of pilgrimage and the development of monumental religious architecture in the region during the 11th and 12th centuries.

Gothic architecture (13th c.-early 16th c.)

Southern French Gothic: a militant religious architecture

See also: Southern French Gothic

At the beginning of the 13th century, the Catholic clergy of the South of France, seeing a growing number of the faithful turning to the Catharism which advocated a more pious austerity, showed the will to correct the defects of the Catholic Church which indulged in luxury. Under the impulse of the bishop of Toulouse, Foulques, an austere and militant architectural style was born with the reconstruction of the Cathedral of Toulouse: the Southern French Gothic. Conceived according to an ideal of poverty and humility to bring the faithful together in a single, vast nave to facilitate preaching, this architectural style then developed during the 13th century in the grand mendicant convents of the city, before spreading in the 14th century to a large number of churches and cathedrals in the region.

Several churches or convents in Toulouse belong to this architectural trend, but two of them are particularly symbolic and remarkable:

• Cathedral of Saint-Étienne (Saint Stephen) is the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toulouse. Its construction, which was mainly done at the beginning and then at the end of the 13th century, reflects the history of this decisive century which saw the city lose its independence to become a French city. The single nave is the first example of Southern French Gothic, at 19 metres wide it probably was at its completion the widest in Western Europe (1210–1220). The higher choir that adjoins it was built in the Gothic style of northern France shortly after the city became part of the Crown of France in 1271.
• Convent of the Jacobins (13th century / early 14th century) was the Dominican convent of Toulouse and is considered to be, together with the Albi Cathedral, the pinnacle of Southern French Gothic architecture. Like all Southern French Gothic churches it has a deliberately austere exterior, but on the inside its alignment of cylindrical columns form one of the tallest colonnades ever erected in Gothic architecture (28 metres high). Its most celebrated feature is the column that closes the choir, whose palm-tree-shaped vault (completed around 1292) was an innovative achievement that anticipated the development of elaborate fan vaulting. Because he thought that the bones of Saint Thomas Aquinas deserved «the most beautiful and most splendid surroundings», in 1368 Pope Urban V made the church of the Jacobins the burial place of the famous Dominican friar, one of the most notable philosophers and theologians of the Middle Ages.

• Southern French Gothic religious architecture
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  Toulouse cathedral
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  Southern French Gothic nave and northern Gothic choir
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  Church of the Jacobins, exterior (13th c.)
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  The vault of the Jacobins and its famous palm tree
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  Cloister (14th c.) and bell tower (1298) of the Jacobins
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  Augustinian Convent (14th c.)
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  Wall belfry of Notre-Dame du Taur (14th c.)

Gothic civil architecture

Toulouse has preserved about thirty Gothic stair towers (plus a dozen Renaissance or later towers), the remains of private mansions (called hôtels particuliers) from the Middle Ages and the early 16th century. Often hidden in courtyards, some of these towers are high enough to exceed their function of serving the floors and display the ambition of their owners.

At a time when most of the houses in Toulouse were built in wood or cob, the brick construction of these towers and hôtels also testifies to their quality.

• Gothic civil architecture
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  Séguy tower, 1477
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  Boysson tower, 1478
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  Delfau tower, 1497
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  Lancefoc tower (late 15th c.) and Serta tower (1529)
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  Olmières tower, 1503
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  Bernuy tower, 1504
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  Bruni tower, 1510
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  Beringuier Bonnefoy tower, 1513
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  Serta tower, 1529

Renaissance architecture (16th c.-early 17th c.)

In the 16th century, Toulouse experienced a golden age coinciding with the Renaissance in France. The woad trade (pastel) brought merchants of international stature to the city, and the Parlement of Toulouse made the city the judicial capital of a large part of the south of France. These wealthy elites had private mansions built, remarkable for their architecture inspired by architectural treatises such as those of Serlio, Alberti or Vitruvius, but also by the royal castles of the Loire Valley and the Île-de-France.

Renowned for the quality of their architecture, the private mansions of the Toulouse Renaissance that have survived to the present day were built over more than a century (around 1515–1620) by reputed architects such as Louis Privat, Nicolas Bachelier, Dominique Bachelier or Pierre Souffron. The most famous of these hôtels are those of Assézat, Bernuy, Vieux-Raisin or Clary.

• Renaissance private mansions
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  Classical facades of hôtel d'Assézat
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  Hôtel d'Assézat
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  Low vault of hôtel de Bernuy
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  Renaissance windows at hôtel du Vieux-Raisin
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  The hôtel de Clary and its Mannerist decoration

• A selection of Renaissance doors and portals
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  Hôtel du Vieux-Raisin (1515–1528)
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  Dalbade church (1537–1540; tympanum 19th c.)
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  Capitole (1546–1607)
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  Hôtel de Bagis (mid-16th c.)
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  Hôtel d'Assézat, stair door (1555–1556)
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  Hôtel Molinier (1556)
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  Collège de l'Esquile (1556)
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  Hôtel d'Assézat, merchant's office (1560–1562)
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  Hôtel d'Assézat, main portal (1560–1562)

17th century architecture

18th century architecture

In the 18th century, Toulouse's economy depended on its Parlement and on the trade in wheat and other grains, which was boosted by the creation of the Canal du Midi at the end of the previous century. The most notable architectural projects were the construction of the quays of the Garonne and the new facade of the Capitole (1750–1760), designed by architect Guillaume Cammas.

In the last third of the 18th century, the ever increasing influence of the Parisian model meant that red brick was no longer popular: the city facades were then whitewashed to imitate stone. This is why nowadays, even though the white paint has generally been removed, there are walls with deep grooves carved in brick to imitate ashlar architecture.

• 18th century architecture
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  Capitole - city hall
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  Hôtel d'Espie
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  Portal of hôtel d'Espie
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  Hôtel de Bonfontan
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  Basilica of la Daurade

19th century architecture

Toulouse's 19th century architecture can be divided into three periods, which sometimes overlapped. In the first half of the century, under the direction of architect Jacques-Pascal Virebent, the main architecturally unified squares were created: the Place du Capitole and the Place Wilson (called place Villeneuve when it was built), whose uniform architecture was inspired by Rue de Rivoli in Paris.

From 1830 onwards, Auguste Virebent and his brothers (sons of Jacques-Pascal) developed a factory producing inexpensive moulded architectural ornaments which met with great success and adorned Toulouse facades with numerous terracotta ornaments, far from the austere architecture of their father.

Then, in the last third of the 19th century, large Haussmann-style avenues were opened in the town centre, such as the central Alsace-Lorraine street, built in yellow brick to imitate Parisian stone.

• 19th century architecture
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  Place du Capitole, the main square of Toulouse (19th c.)
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  Place du Capitole (Café Bibent)
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  Facade with moulded terracotta decorations (19th c.)
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  Facade with moulded terracotta decorations (19th c.)
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  Yellow brick of Alsace-Lorraine street (19th c.)

20th and 21st centuries architecture

From the mid-19th century, the railway made stone cheaper to transport to Toulouse. Architects continued to use it for its prestige, although it no longer had the same economic significance as in the past. The main railway station, built at the beginning of the 20th century, is thus entirely faced in white stone.

In the interwar period, the Art Deco style flourished, notably in the municipal buildings designed by city architect Jean Montariol, such as the library on rue du Périgord (1935).

Subsequently, concrete replaced the traditional materials, but brick and stone continued to be used for cladding, for example by Robert Venturi (winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1991) and Denise Scott Brown for the seat of the departmental council (1999), and by Grafton Architects (Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara), winners of the 2020 Pritzker Prize, for the Toulouse School of Economics building (2019).

• 20th and 21st centuries architecture
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  Art Nouveau facade, Gambetta street (early 20th c.)
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  Art Deco facade, Alsace-Lorraine street (c. 1930)
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  Toulouse municipal library, Art Deco facade (1935)
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  Seat of the departmental council (1999), by Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates
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  Seat of the Toulouse School of Economics (2019), by Grafton Architects

Banks of the Garonne, Canal du Midi, parks

In the city centre, the Garonne is lined with brick quays and dykes built from the 18th century to protect the city from its floods. The Pont-Neuf, begun in 1544 by Nicolas Bachelier and completed in 1632 by Pierre Souffron and Jacques Lemercier, took almost a century to build, so ambitious was the project. It was a very modern bridge for its time: unlike medieval bridges, it carried no houses on its deck, and it was designed to withstand the river's violent floods, with lowered arches, superimposed spurs to divide the current, and piers pierced with round openings (ouïes) that let the water through in times of flood. During the great flood of 23 June 1875, which swept away the Saint-Michel, Saint-Pierre and Empalot bridges, the Pont-Neuf held.

Further downstream, on a ford across the river, stood the mills of the Bazacle. In the Middle Ages they were owned by companies whose capital was divided into transferable shares, later merged into the Bazacle company. Economic historians regard its statutes as the oldest documented corporate statutes known, and these Toulouse companies as forerunners of the joint-stock company, preceding the Dutch and English East India companies by several centuries.

On the left bank, low-lying and long exposed to the river's floods, stand two former hospitals founded in the 12th century; separated from the city by the river, the sick were kept away from its inhabitants. The Hôtel-Dieu Saint-Jacques received pilgrims on the way to Santiago de Compostela, and in 1998 was inscribed as a World Heritage Site as part of the Routes of Santiago de Compostela in France. The Hôpital de La Grave, first recorded in 1197, was devoted to plague victims from the 14th century and became a general hospital for the poor in the 17th century.

Built at the end of the 17th century, the Canal du Midi bypasses the city centre and has linked Toulouse to the Mediterranean ever since; its 240 km (150 mi) were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996.

The Jardin Royal, created in 1754 by Louis de Mondran as the city's first public garden, the Grand Rond and the Jardin des Plantes, founded in 1794 by the naturalist Philippe Picot de Lapeyrouse as a botanical garden, form a set of adjacent parks linked by footbridges, which also include the natural history museum. Other parks include the Prairie des Filtres on the left bank, the Raymond VI garden, and the Compans-Caffarelli gardens, created in 1980 on the site of former barracks, with their Japanese garden.

• Banks of the Garonne, Canal du Midi, parks
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  Pont-Neuf (16th-17th c.)
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  Red brick dykes from the 18th century
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  Quays of the Garonne and Pont-Neuf
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  Hôtel-Dieu Saint-Jacques former hospital (12th–19th c.)
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  La Grave former hospital (12th–19th c.) and the copper dome of its chapel
• 
  Port de la Daurade, a former river port converted into a recreational area
• 
  Raymond VI garden, at the foot of the last remains of the old Toulouse ramparts on the left bank
• 
  Canal du Midi (17th c.)
• 
  Grand rond park
• 
  Japanese garden
• 
  Renaissance portal in Jardin des plantes
• 
  Prairie des Filtres park

Aerospace

Toulouse is a leading centre of the European aerospace industry. It hosts the headquarters of Airbus and the final assembly lines of the A320, A330 and A350; the A380 was also assembled there until 2021, as was the French-built Concorde. The city is also home to the headquarters of ATR, Latécoère and Liebherr-Aerospace & Transportation, the aerospace and rail division of the Liebherr group, whose Toulouse site is its centre of excellence for aircraft air and thermal management systems.

Toulouse is also Europe's main space industry hub: in 2019 the sector accounted for 12,000 jobs and 400 companies in the metropolitan area, a quarter of the European space workforce. The Toulouse Space Centre of the French space agency CNES hosts the French Space Command, created in 2019, and a NATO Centre of Excellence for space. In October 2025, Airbus, Thales and Leonardo signed a memorandum of understanding to merge their satellite activities into a joint venture, provisionally named Project Bromo, which would be headquartered in Toulouse and employ around 25,000 people; the partners aim to obtain regulatory approval in the second half of 2027.

The main Airbus factory in Blagnac, near Toulouse, lies next to Toulouse Airport

Colleges and universities

The University of Toulouse (Université de Toulouse) was established in 1229 (now split into three separate universities). Its creation was one of the terms of the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Albigensian Crusade: the count of Toulouse agreed to finance fourteen masters to combat heresy, and the university was founded under the authority of Pope Gregory IX. A papal bull of 30 April 1233 granted its graduates the right to teach anywhere, the earliest known formal attestation of the licentia ubique docendi.

• Catholic University of Toulouse
• Université Toulouse I, Toulouse School of Economics, Toulouse School of Management and Institut d'études politiques de Toulouse
• University of Toulouse-Jean Jaurès (Formerly University of Toulouse II – Le Mirail)
• Université Paul Sabatier (Toulouse III)

Toulouse is also the home of Toulouse Business School (TBS), Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), the Institut supérieur européen de gestion group (ISEG Group), the Institut supérieur européen de formation par l'action (ISEFAC), E-Artsup and several engineering schools:

• ICAM Toulouse (Institut catholique d'arts et métiers)
• INSA Toulouse
• ISAE SUPAERO (Institut supérieur de l'aéronautique et de l'espace)
• ENAC (École Nationale de l'Aviation Civile)
• INP ENSEEIHT (École Nationale Supérieure d'Électronique, d'Électrotechnique, d'Informatique, d'Hydraulique et des Télécommunications)
• ENSFEA (École nationale supérieure de formation de l'enseignement agricole)
• INP ENSIACET (École nationale supérieure d'ingénieurs en art chimique et technologique)
• INP ENSAT (École Nationale Supérieure Agronomique de Toulouse)
• INP ENM (École Nationale de la Météorologie)
• EPITA (École pour l'informatique et les techniques avancées)
• EPITECH (École pour l'informatique et les nouvelles technologies or European Institute of Information Technology)
• IPSA (Institut Polytechnique des Sciences Avancées)
• EIPurpan (École d'ingénieurs de Purpan)
• UPSSITECH [fr] (Université Paul Sabatier, sciences, ingénierie et technologie)

Primary and secondary schools

The most well known high schools in Toulouse are Lycée Pierre-de-Fermat [fr] and Lycée Saint-Sernin [fr].

International schools serving area expatriates are in nearby Colomiers:

• International School of Toulouse
• Deutsche Schule Toulouse (German school)

Train

The main railway station, with regional and national services, is Toulouse-Matabiau station. In addition, there are several smaller stations in the city: Toulouse-Saint-Agne, Gallieni-Cancéropôle, Toulouse-Saint-Cyprien-Arènes, Le TOEC, Lardenne, Saint-Martin-du-Touch, Les Ramassiers, Montaudran and Lacourtensourt. The stations of Lalande-Église and Route-de-Launaguet were served until 2016.

Toulouse is served by TGV high-speed trains, but they run on conventional track beyond Bordeaux, and the journey from Paris takes more than four and a half hours. A new high-speed line between Bordeaux and Toulouse, part of a wider high-speed rail project for south-western France, is expected to open in the early 2030s, bringing Toulouse within 1 hour 5 minutes of Bordeaux and about 3 hours 10 minutes of Paris. Estimated at about €14 billion and funded by the State, local authorities and the European Union, the project is opposed by environmental associations and some local residents, whose legal challenges have so far been rejected.

Metro

All urban bus, metro and tram services are operated by Tisséo. In addition to an extensive bus network, the Toulouse Metro is a VAL (Véhicule Automatique Léger) metro system made up of driverless (automatic) rubber-tyred trains:

• Line A runs for 12.5 km (7.8 mi) from Balma-Gramont in the north-east to Basso Cambo in the south-west.
• Line B, which opened in June 2007, serves 20 stations north to south and intersects line A at Jean Jaurès.

A third line, line C, is under construction. About 27 km (17 mi) long, mostly underground, with 21 stations, it will link Colomiers to Labège via the airport area and the aerospace district, and is scheduled to open in 2028. It will cross line B at two stations (La Vache and François Verdier) and line A at Matabiau Gares, next to the main railway station.

The suburban railway line between Arènes and Colomiers, operated by SNCF and connected to metro line A at Arènes, was known as line C from its opening in September 2003, when the Le TOEC station was created and the Gare des Capelles was renamed Lardenne; since 2023 it has been called the Arènes–Colomiers line, leaving the name to the new metro line. A similar SNCF service, line D, runs south from Toulouse-Matabiau to Muret.

Tramway

The Toulouse conurbation has two tram lines:

• Line T1, 14.8 km long with 25 stations, has been in service since December 2010. It links Toulouse to the MEETT Exhibition and Convention Centre in Beauzelle, via Blagnac.
• Line T2, a branch of T1 serving Toulouse–Blagnac Airport, has been closed since June 2023 for the construction of a new interchange station at Blagnac; its infrastructure is to be reused by an express airport tram line, which will connect with metro line C.

Cable car

Since 14 May 2022, Toulouse has been served by Téléo, an urban cable car linking Paul-Sabatier University to Rangueil Hospital and the Oncopole (a major cancer research centre). It flies over the Garonne and the hill of Pech David and, at 3 kilometres, it was the longest urban cable car in France when it opened. It is presented as the first link in a public transport belt that is not radial and oriented towards the city centre, but designed to encircle the south of Toulouse.

Bicycle

In 2007, a citywide bicycle rental scheme called VélôToulouse was introduced, with bicycles available from automated stations for a daily, weekly, monthly or yearly subscription; as of 2026 it had 465 stations in ten communes of the metropolitan area, offering both conventional and electric bicycles.

Toulouse Métropole has some 830 km (520 mi) of cycle facilities. A Réseau Express Vélo (REV) of 13 main cycle routes, linking the city centre to the suburbs, is under construction and is planned to reach about 430 km (270 mi).

Airports

Toulouse–Blagnac Airport, located 7 km (4.3 mi) north-west of the city centre, is the city's main airport. It handled about 7.6 million passengers in 2025, compared with 9.6 million in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic. The other airfields are:

• Toulouse Francazal: former principal airport, then a military airbase; its activity is now reduced.
• Toulouse Lasbordes: dedicated to leisure aviation and flying clubs.

Canal

The Canal du Midi, built from 1666 by Pierre-Paul Riquet, links Toulouse to the Mediterranean at the Étang de Thau, near Sète; together with the Canal de Garonne, which continues from Toulouse towards Bordeaux, it forms the Canal des Deux Mers between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. For nearly two centuries it was a major route for goods, and from 1674 a passenger service, the barques de poste, linked Toulouse to Castelnaudary and Agde. The opening of the Bordeaux–Sète railway in 1857 ended passenger traffic and began the decline of freight, which ceased altogether in 1989. Today the canal is used almost exclusively for river tourism, of which it is France's leading destination, while its towpath, free of cars, forms a cycle and walking route from Toulouse to the Mediterranean.

Music

On 31 October 2023, Toulouse was named UNESCO City of Music.

The Théâtre du Capitole is the home of opera and ballet; there has been a theatre on the site since 1736. In the 19th century, its audience was known for its exacting taste: under the system of the "three débuts", the public decided whether newly engaged singers would be kept for the season. Regarded as a centre of bel canto, the theatre attracted leading singers who came to have their talent confirmed before this demanding public, and since 1954 the city has hosted an international singing competition for young singers of all nationalities.

The theatre's orchestra, the Orchestre National du Capitole, has performed mainly at the Halle aux Grains, a former covered grain market, since 1974. Long associated with Michel Plasson and later directed by Tugan Sokhiev, the orchestra has been led since 2024 by the Finnish conductor Tarmo Peltokoski.

With more than thirty organs of different periods and styles, including the renowned Cavaillé-Coll organ of the Basilica of Saint-Sernin (1889), one of the organ builder's best-preserved late masterpieces, Toulouse has been a member of the association European Cities of Historical Organs (ECHO) since 1997, the year it was founded; the city hosted the association's annual congress in 2007.

Occitan heritage and the Floral Games

Toulouse is the seat of the Académie des Jeux floraux, whose origins go back to 1323, when seven citizens of Toulouse, known as the "seven troubadours", founded a poetry contest; the first was held on 3 May 1324. Made a royal academy by Louis XIV in 1694 and restored by Napoleon in 1806, it is often described as the oldest literary society in Europe. Every 3 May, it still awards its prizes in the form of flowers, such as the violet, the eglantine and the marigold, to poets writing in French and in Occitan. Among its laureates was the young Victor Hugo, who won a golden lily in 1819 and was then made a master of the Floral Games (maître ès Jeux floraux).

Occitan culture also remains visible in everyday life. Since 2002, streets in the historic centre have carried bilingual French and Occitan name plates, and since 1995 a large bronze Occitan cross by the artist Raymond Moretti, bearing the signs of the zodiac, has been set into the paving of the Place du Capitole. Once the emblem of the counts of Toulouse, the cross is today the symbol of both the city and the Occitanie region.

Civic traditions

From 1295 to 1787, the capitouls who governed the city recorded each year's events in the Annals of the city, illustrated with painted portraits of the newly elected magistrates; the first of the twelve books, covering 1295 to 1532, was decorated on almost every page. Many of its leaves were burned in a public bonfire during the French Revolution, but the surviving leaves, kept in the municipal archives, form a collection of civic portraits described as unique in Europe.

The violet has been the city's floral emblem since the 19th century. According to tradition, the Parma violet was brought from Italy in 1854 by a soldier as a gift for his Toulouse sweetheart. Grown in the market gardens north of the city, it provided a living for some 600 producers, whose bouquets were exported across Europe, until a series of harsh winters in the 1950s, notably that of 1956, nearly wiped out the crop. Revived from 1985 by agronomists, horticulturists and the municipal greenhouses, which now hold a national collection of violets, the flower survives in local confectionery, notably violet sweets, and is celebrated every February at the Fête de la Violette.

Museums and theme parks

Toulouse has many museums, the most important of which are:

• Musée des Augustins, the city's fine arts museum, housed in a 14th-century Augustinian convent with its medieval cloister; it holds one of the finest collections of Romanesque capitals in France.
• The Bemberg Foundation, housed in the Renaissance Hôtel d'Assézat, displays the private collection of paintings and decorative arts assembled by Georges Bemberg, with a room devoted to Pierre Bonnard.
• Musée Saint-Raymond, the archaeological museum, housed in a 16th-century former university college next to the Basilica of Saint-Sernin; it holds the Roman sculptures of the imperial villa of Chiragan.
• Musée Paul-Dupuy, now the Musée des Arts précieux, devoted to decorative and graphic arts from the Middle Ages to the 1930s, including clocks and watches and a reconstructed 17th-century pharmacy.
• Musée Georges-Labit, devoted to the arts of Asia and ancient Egypt.
• The Muséum de Toulouse, the natural history museum, housed in the former convent of the Discalced Carmelites.
• Les Abattoirs, the museum of modern and contemporary art, opened in a former municipal slaughterhouse.
• Le Château d'Eau, an early 19th-century water tower, was converted in 1974 at the instigation of the Toulouse photographer Jean Dieuzaide into the first public gallery in France devoted exclusively to photography.

• Museums
• 
  Musée des Augustins
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  Nostre Dame de Grasse at Musée des Augustins
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  Painting of Lucas Cranach the Elder at Bemberg Foundation
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  Musée Saint-Raymond
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  Georges Labit Museum
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  Muséum de Toulouse
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  Les Abattoirs
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  Picasso at Les Abattoirs

Toulouse also has several theme parks and attractions, notably highlighting its aeronautical and space heritage:

• Cité de l'espace, a science centre devoted to spaceflight.
• Aeroscopia, an aeronautical museum near Toulouse–Blagnac Airport, whose collection includes two Concorde airliners.
• L'Envol des pionniers, a museum devoted to the Aéropostale, the airmail company based in Toulouse which operated between France, Africa and South America from 1918 to 1933, and whose pilots included Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Jean Mermoz and Henri Guillaumet.
• Halle de La Machine, opened in November 2018 in the Montaudran district, houses numerous small or giant animated machines, often inspired by aeronautics; after the 2018 street show (see Festivals), the Minotaur Astérion settled there, and carries up to fifty passengers along the former Aéropostale runway.

• Theme parks
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  Cité de l'espace
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  Aeroscopia
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  Replica Salmson 2 A.2 at L'Envol des pionniers
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  Halle de La Machine
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  The giant Minotaur of the Halle de La Machine

Festivals

Toulouse hosts several recurring festivals. Every June since 1995, the world music festival Rio Loco, created and run by the city council, has taken over the Prairie des Filtres on the banks of the Garonne; its 31st edition was held in 2026.

Created in 2022 by the Toulouse rap duo Bigflo & Oli, the Rose Festival is a pop, rap and electronic music festival held each year in late summer at the MEETT exhibition centre in Aussonne, on the outskirts of Toulouse; its fifth edition took place in 2026. The fourth edition, in 2025, drew 115,000 visitors.

Founded in 1991 in Cahors by Marie-Thérèse Perrin, the contemporary art festival Le Printemps de Septembre moved to Toulouse in 2001. Now held every two years, it is free and takes place in around 25 venues in Toulouse, its metropolitan area and the Occitanie region.

Organised since 1996, the international organ festival Toulouse les Orgues takes place every October and showcases the city's finest instruments.

Each year for a weekend in February, the Fête de la Violette fills the Place du Capitole with stalls and events celebrating the violet, the city's emblematic flower.

In November 2018, the street theatre company La Machine, directed by François Delarozière, staged Le Gardien du Temple ("The Guardian of the Temple"), a free four-day "urban opera" in which Astérion, a Minotaur about 15 metres (50 ft) tall made of wood and metal, and Ariane, a giant mechanical spider, roamed the streets of the city centre; the show drew more than 800,000 spectators. A second episode, La Porte des Ténèbres ("The Gate of Darkness"), was performed from 25 to 27 October 2024, introducing a new machine, Lilith, the "Guardian of Darkness".

Street art

Toulouse has had an active graffiti scene since the 1990s, notably around the Truskool collective; several artists who began painting in the city, such as Miss Van, Fafi, Reso and Tilt, have since gained international recognition. In 2016 the city launched Rose Béton, a biennial festival of urban art curated by Tilt, with murals in the streets and exhibitions at the Abattoirs museum.

The Toulouse sculptor James Colomina, sometimes dubbed the "French Banksy", installs life-size red resin figures, often of children, unannounced in public spaces, from the rooftops of Toulouse to Paris, Berlin and Barcelona. In 2017 he placed one of his figures on the site of the AZF factory in memory of the victims of the 2001 explosion.

Gastronomy and markets

Toulouse's culinary culture, positioned at the crossroads of Gascony and Languedoc, features a wide array of regional produce, with duck dishes and foie gras playing a prominent role. Its two most iconic specialties are the saucisse de Toulouse (Toulouse sausage)—served grilled or used in regional cooking—and cassoulet, a traditional slow-cooked casserole made with white beans, duck confit, pork, and Toulouse sausage. Other local symbols include violet-based sweets and regional wines such as Fronton.

This gastronomic heritage is alive across the city's numerous covered and open-air food markets, led by the emblematic Marché Victor Hugo with its fresh produce stalls and upper-floor bistros, along with the Marché des Carmes and the Saint-Aubin open-air market. Modern food culture has also expanded into former industrial spaces, notably at Les Halles de la Cartoucherie, a large food hall housed in a converted 19th-century ammunitions factory.

• Toulouse food markets and culinary specialties
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  Marché Victor Hugo
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  Les Halles de la Cartoucherie
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  Cassoulet
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  Toulouse sausage

Twin towns and sister cities

Toulouse is twinned with:

Other cooperations

Toulouse also has accords of cooperation with the following towns:

Citations

Sources

• Le Stang, Anne (2006). Histoire de Toulouse illustrée (in French). leperegrinateurediteur.com. ISBN 2-910352-44-7.
• Kerrison, Helen & Jeremy (2008). The Practical Guide to Toulouse. leperegrinateurediteur.com. ISBN 978-2-910352-46-2.
• Jean-Marc Olivier Histoire de Toulouse et de la métropole (in French). Privat. 2019. ISBN 978-2-7089-8379-3.