Les meilleurs hôtels à Toulouse

The largest city in the southwest of France, nicknamed La Ville Rose for its ubiquitous rose-colored brick buildings, lies just 60-odd miles from the border with Spain; because of this, its flavor seems to be more Spanish than French. Place du Capitole is the city's geographic and cultural heart. Poets give public readings here each May and have done so since 1324, when a literary society created to promote the local language, Langue d'Oc, first organized the Jeux Floraux, a spoken word festival that continues to this day. Built at the end of the 11th and beginning of the 12th centuries, the Basilique St-Sernin is the largest Romanesque church in France. The church is named for the early Christian martyr Saturnin, the former bishop of Toulouse who refused to take part in a bull sacrifice and, consequently, was tied to the animal's horns and dragged to his death. But that was back in 257 A.D. and modern Toulouse is rather more civilized. Second only to Paris as a university center, the city has a lively student and arts community, is renowned for its opera and orchestra and is home to the giant Aerospatiale aviation complex, the power behind Concord and Airbus. Toulouse is the French gateway to the ruggedly scenic Pyrenees, Western Europe's highest mountain range after the Alps, where wanderers will find outstanding hiking and climbing, thermal springs that promise a miracle cure for sterility, and impeccable examples of glacial erosion. Carcassonne, home to Europe's longest medieval walls and reputed to be the setting for Charles Perrault's "Puss in Boots," lies just 55 miles to the east of Toulouse.