A Get Away to the Pink City of Toulouse

A Get Away to the Pink City of Toulouse

All our apartments in Toulouse

Toulouse, is an active bustling city in southwest France, with a taste for celebration that is due to its proximity to Spain. The area is famous for rugby and its aerospace industry. Toulouse was originally a Roman town and it has steadily expanded into the large city we see today.

Some grand old palaces still survive in the Old Town such as the Place du Capitole which is now used as the Hotel de Ville. Just around the corner in the Place St Georges and Rue Alsace Lorraine are the main concentration of shops, bars and pavement cafes. The city offers fabulous regional cuisine, two striking cathedrals, lively street life and a superb, rose-brick Old Town which as the French say is “Pink at dawn, red at noon and mauve at dusk”.

The Pick of the Sights

Toulouse is best seen on foot. The Basilique de St Sernin is the largest Romanesque basilica in Europe and was built to accommodate the pilgrims going to Santiago de Compostela. Highlights are the rows of decorative brick arches topped with pepper pot turrets and the octagonal brick belfry. The other must see church is a Gothic masterpiece – Les Jacobins – featuring a soaring, 22 branched palm tree vault in the apse. From the 1st April to 11th November, the tourist train will take you around the sights: la Capitole, Saint-Sernin Basilica, the Daurade church, the Saint-Etienne cathedral, the Garonne River quays, the Place Wilson and the Place Saint-Georges. The Tourist Office will also organise half day or full day walking tours through the historic centre of Toulouse or through surrounding Midi-Pyrenees area in English.