Welcome to chapter five of our trip Summer in France: Toulouse. Toulouse is the fourth largest city in France with a population of approximately one million people. It’s located in the south of France about 75 miles from Spain. Like our stay in Poitiers, this is our first time to visit this city.
The Romans founded Toulouse in the 2nd century. Today, the city is referred to as “La Ville Rose”, or Pink City because of the color of the bricks made from the local clay. These bricks have been used on buildings throughout the city for centuries. Even satellite images from space shows the area with a pink hue.
Photo Credit: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2017), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
City Hall and our police encounter
In the heart of the old city lies a huge square where the “Hôtel de Ville” or city hall is located. The original construction began in 1190. The current building is primarily from 1750.
As beautiful as the exterior of this building is, the interior is virtually a museum. Now to enter city hall, we didn’t realize everyone needs to go through security, metal detectors, etc. It was all good until they told us to empty our pockets on the table. We placed our money, coins, keys, and cell phones on the table. Unfortunately, to get our wallets, we had to unbuckle our pants and remove our money belts that we always use when we travel so we could enter the metal detectors. Ok, slightly embarrassing but then they said “anything else”?
Well, we had just run into the grocery store for a couple extra dinner supplies and Danny had a bag of fresh green beans in his coat pocket and I had a jar of seasoning to add to the pile. The officer looked strangely at us as we held up the line to remove our groceries from our coats. We replied “yes, there’s more for dinner, but the rest is at home”. They let us through with a chuckle and we collected all our personal items and our groceries and went inside. Good thing we had dropped off all our booze earlier at the apartment. Oh well, tourists!
Walking into the courtyard highlighted the pink brick and beautiful architecture. We didn’t know about the beautiful interior painted ceilings, gold accented moldings, and incredible art on display in the rooms used for official council meetings and weddings—absolutely beautiful.
Toulouse top sites
Wandering around the city, we stopped by the Basilica of Saint-Sernin (1080-1120). It’s the largest Romanesque building remaining in Europe. Next we saw the Hôtel d’Assézat which was a mansion that a wealthy businessman started constructing as his home in 1555. He died 26 years later and it still wasn’t completed. We then noticed the Jacobins Convent (1230) peeking through one of the side streets. Relics of Thomas Aquinas are housed here. The bell tower (1275-1298) is in the background of the photo. Finally, the Canal du Midi and Canal de Brienne are part of a water route connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic.
Most of our time spent in Toulouse explored the many narrow streets, squares, parks, and scenic bridges.
Day drinking is nice, but rooftop drinking is even better!
It was another beautiful day today, so we headed to the department store Galeries Lafayette as they have a rooftop bar. Cheers!
We had a great week of sunshine and 75 degree temps during the day, but the city is also beautiful at night.
This ends our chapter of Summer in France: Toulouse. We also enjoyed a day trip to Albi this week which I’ll post about next. Hope you’ll be back to join us.
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