TOULOUSE , with
its beautiful historic
centre, is one of the
most vibrant and
metropolitan provincial
cities in France. This
is a transformation that
has come about since the
war, under the guidance
of the French state,
which has poured in
money to make Toulouse
the think-tank of high-tech
industry and a sort of
premier trans-national
Euroville. Always an
aviation centre - St-Exupéry
and Mermoz flew out from
here on their pioneering
airmail flights over
Africa and the Atlantic
in the 1920s - Toulouse
is now home to
Aérospatiale, the
driving force behind
Concorde, Airbus and the
Ariane space rocket. The
national Space Centre,
the European shuttle
programme, the leading
aeronautical schools,
the frontier-pushing
electronics industry...
it's all happening in
Toulouse, whose 110,000
students make it second
only to Paris as a
university centre.
But it's not to the
burgeoning suburbs of
factories, labs,
shopping and housing
complexes that all these
people go for their
entertainment, but to
the old
Ville Rose
- pink not only in its
brickwork, but also in
its politics.
This is not the first
flush of pre-eminence
for Toulouse. From the
tenth to the thirteenth
centuries the counts of
Toulouse controlled much
of southern France. They
maintained the most
resplendent court in the
land, renowned
especially for its
troubadours, the poets
of courtly love, whose
work influenced Petrarch,
Dante and Chaucer and
thus the whole course of
European poetry. Until,
that is, the arrival of
the hungry northern
French nobles of the
Albigensian Crusade; in
1271 Toulouse became
crown property
The City
The part of the city
you'll want to see forms
a rough hexagon clamped
round a bend in the wide,
brown River Garonne and
contained in a ring of
inner nineteenth-century
boulevards - Strasbourg,
Carnot, Jules-Guesde and
others. An outer ring
enclosing these is
formed by the Canal du
Midi, which here joins
the Garonne on its way
from the Mediterranean
to the Atlantic.
Old Toulouse is
effectively quartered by
two nineteenth-century
streets: the long
shopping street, rue
d'Alsace-Lorraine/rue du
Languedoc , which
runs north-south; and
rue de Metz , which
runs east-west onto the
Pont-Neuf and across the
Garonne. It is all very
compact and easily
walkable.
In addition to the
general pleasure of
wandering the streets,
there are three very
good museums and some
real architectural
treasures in the
churches of St-Sernin
and Les Jacobins and in
the magnificent
Renaissance town houses
- hôtels particuliers
- of the merchants who
grew rich on the
woad-dye trade. This
formed the basis of the
city's economy from the
mid-fifteenth to the
mid-sixteenth century,
when the arrival of
indigo from the Indian
colonies wiped it out.
Place du Capitole
is the centre of gravity
for the city's social
life. Its smart cafés
throng with people at
lunchtime and in the
early evening when the
dying sun flushes the
pink facade of the big
town hall opposite. This
is the scene of a
mammoth Wednesday
market for food,
clothes and junk, and of
a smaller organic foods
market on Tuesday and
Saturday mornings. From
place du Capitole, a
labyrinth of narrow
medieval streets
radiates out to the
town's several other
squares, such as place
Wilson, the more
intimate place
St-Georges, the
delightful triangular
place de la Trinité and
place St-étienne in
front of the cathedral.
For green space, you
have to head for the
sunny banks of the
Garonne or the lovely
formal gardens of the
Grand-Rond and
Jardin des Plantes
in the southeast corner
of the centre. A less
obvious but attractive
alternative is the
towpath of the Canal du
Midi; the best place to
join it is a short walk
southeast of the Jardin
des Plantes, by the
neo-Moorish pavilion of
the Georges-Labit
museum , which
houses a good collection
of Egyptian and Oriental
art.
