Our Toulouse series takes you all over the ‘pink city’, starting with top sights like the Place du Capitole and the Saint Sernin Basilica, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We also visit the riverside, the picturesque back streets and a whole variety of museums and galleries. There are also day trip ideas, along the Canal du Midi, to the popular medieval fortified town of Carcassonne and to the ancient city of Albi, home of the Toulouse-Lautrec Museum.
The 9 episodes in our City Break Toulouse series bring you all the background history and culture you need to fully understand this lovely city. In short, here is all the research you’d do yourself if only you had the time.
Each episode centres around a podcast, available here or on all the usual providers. As a minimum, you’ll also find an introductory summary plus useful links and ideas for further reading. Eventually, there’ll be full blogpost with lot more information and pictures.
TOULOUSE : HISTORY & CULTURE
EPISODE 1: Introduction to Toulouse
Bienvenue! Welcome to Episode 1 of City Breaks Toulouse. This opening podcast will give you an overview of the city, historically, geographically and culturally and an idea of the material to be covered in each of the remaining 8 episodes. We hope that after listening to it, you’ll be looking forward to the rest of the series and maybe also keen get down to planning a visit, knowing that what you have learned will help you get the most out of your city break.
EPISODE 2: Churches & Troubadours
First, a tour of the main churches in Toulouse. The Basilique St Sernin was founded after the Bishop of Toulouse was martyred by being dragged through the streets tied to a bull. The Couvent des Jacobins is a one-time centre of the Inquisition against heretics and also the burial site of a saint who never visited the city. Find out too about the Cathars whose pious, very particular, take on Christianity so enraged the established church that the Pope sent crusaders to ‘Kill them all.’ Then hear about the troubadours, wandering poets who shunned Latin and wrote in the Occitan language, thus proving their independence of mind.
EPISODE 3: The Capitol
The elegant pink façade of the Capitol, Toulouse’s town hall, which overlooks the magnificent Place du Capitole, is the city’s best-known symbol. Hear about some of its key historical moments, including executions to prove a point and the slaughter of one religious group by another. Then find out what to look out for on a visit, including paintings recalling Toulouse’s great moments, such as a visit from Pope Urban II and the defeat of Simon de Montfort. Plus busts of the citizens of whom the city is most proud, including the mathematician Fermat (of last theorem fame) and Pierre-Paul Riquet, the engineer who built the Canal du Midi.
EPISODE 4: The Resistance
The fascinating ‘Musée de la Résistance et de la Déportation is tucked away near the Jardin des Plantes. Its detailed displays of documents, photographs and memorabilia pay tribute to the bravery of the many Résistants who did all they could to work against the German occupation of the city from 1942-44. It also bears witness to the terrible fate of many of the city’s Jews, deported from Toulouse to the concentration camps. Hear about the places in Toulouse which tell us more about the period and the people whose bravery should be related to each new generation.
EPISODE 5: 9 Toulouse Museums
The story of Toulouse’s museums tells us what has been most important in shaping the city. We visit 9 institutions, starting with Terre de Pastel, where you can discover how woad brought fabulous wealth to 15th century Toulouse and ending at La Cité de l’Espace which celebrates the city’s massive contribution to space travel. Along the way you’ll hear how a love-stuck Genoese soldier brought the first violets to Toulouse, how the pilot of the earliest night mail flights to South America turned novelist and wrote about his adventures and how the work of monks caring for medieval pilgrims led to today’s renowned Oncopole cancer research centre.
EPISODE 6: Art & Architecture
We start with a tour of some of the ‘hotels particuliers’ which are such a feature of Toulouse architecture, finding out what kind of houses the city’s elite built themselves once money and political power had come their way. Then we visit a variety of art galleries, large and tiny, to discover the wonderful range of goodies on offer, from Roman remains to cutting edge photography, taking in plenty of medieval sculpture, ‘Golden Age’ paintings and oriental treasures en route, while not forgetting to pass by ‘one of France’s best contemporary museums’ too. Meet some local artists-made-good and a host of internationally famous ones as well.
EPISODE 7: Canal du Midi
What more idyllic escape from city-centre Toulouse than to potter up the Canal du Midi on foot, by bike or – best of all – in a boat? Hear how ‘Europe’s biggest public works project since the fall of the Roman Empire’ came to be opened in 1681, and find out what there is to see along its banks, just day-out distance from Toulouse. Enjoy the reminiscences of writers who describe sailing down it as ‘motoring though an impressionist painting’ or drifting lazily through ‘a land of sunflowers, wheat fields, vineyards, ancient cities with red-tiled rooves, crumbling ruins wrapped in mystery.’
EPISODE 8: Carcassonne & Toulouse Lautrec
Two ideas for easy excursions from Toulouse. First, the medieval citadel of Carcassonne, silhouetted against the skyline on a million postcards, whose romantic exterior belies an often gruesome history. And secondly, the equally beautiful city of Albi which boasts not just a unique medieval heritage, and a gorgeous gothic cathedral, but also the Musée Toulouse Lautrec. Here you can learn about the life of the artist who grew up in Albi before he set off to Paris to paint some of that city’s most iconic artworks. The museum here has over 200 of his paintings and posters, plus a large collection of his drawings.
EPISODE 9: Gastronomy
Gastronomy is a definite highlight of a visit to Toulouse and not just because it’s the home of cassoulet. Of course we’ll look at the legends behind that warming dish and get as far as we can on what might be in the highly secret recipe, but we mustn’t neglect Toulouse sausages, the great duck versus goose debate, the many uses of violet as a flavouring or such sweet treats as the apricot-and-almond delight which is fénétra. And then there’s the wine. Obviously. We’ll hear too from writers who lingered in the Languedoc and wrote enticingly about the delicious morsels and gargantuan feasts they savoured.
MORE READING ABOUT
toulouse
Useful websites for tourists
Toulouse Tourist Office
Haute-Garonne Tourism
Guide to Toulouse and the Pyrénées
Four useful guidebooks
The Rough Guide to Languedoc and Roussillon
Toulouse and the Haute Garonne by B G Preston
Toulouse Travel Guide by Aaron Ellis
Cycling the Canal du Midi by Declan Lyons
Travel Writing on Toulouse and surroundings
Floating through France by April Orcutt Life Between Locks on the canal du Midi
Notes from the Languedoc and Rouissillon by Rupert Wright
Virgile’s Vineyard, A Year in the Languedoc Wine Country by Patrick Moon
Arrazat’s Aubergines: Inside a Languedoc Kitchen by Patrick Moon
A Goose in Toulouse and other Culinary Adventures by Mort Rosenbaum (only one chapter on Toulouse)
History and Biography
Toulouse-Lautrec – A Life by Julia Frey
The Lost Airman by Seth F Stevens A True Story of Escape from Nazi-Occupied France
Kill them All by Sean McGlynn Cathars and Carnage in the Albigensian Crusade
PODCASTS TO GET YOU STARTED
OTHER CITY BREAK IDEAS
LATEST ARTICLES
GALLERY
