Forget Paris for a while. France is more than just the Eiffel Tower or The Notre Dame. The country has countless other places to explore and in this special edition, we at TIPSS would like to give you some gorgeous glimpses of Toulouse, France’s fourth-largest city after Paris, Marseille and Lyon.
According to Wikipedia, Toulouse was founded by the Romans, and was the capital of the Visigothic Kingdom in the 5th century and eventually became the unofficial capital of the cultural region of Occitania (Southern France). It is now the capital of the administrative region of Occitania, the second largest region in Metropolitan France.
The University of Toulouse is one of the oldest in Europe (founded in 1229). Toulouse is also the home of prestigious higher education schools, notably in the field of aerospace engineering. Together with the university, they have turned Toulouse into the fourth-largest student city in France, with a university population of nearly 140,000 students.
Toulouse counts three UNESCO World Heritage Sites: the Canal du Midi (designated in 1996 and shared with other cities), and the Basilica of St. Sernin, the largest remaining Romanesque building in Europe, designated in 1998 along with the former hospital Hôtel-Dieu Saint-Jacques because of their significance to the Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage route. The city’s unique architecture made of pinkish terracotta bricks has earned Toulouse the nickname La Ville rose (“The Pink city”)
Fresh from his third trip of this city in the south of France, our fellow inspirer, Shah Shamshiri shares some of the spectacular sights of this beautiful city.
The Capitole de Toulouse commonly known as the Capitole, is the heart of the municipal administration and the city hall of the city.
