The part of the city you'll want to
see forms a rough hexagon clamped
round a bend in the wide, brown
River Garonne and contained in a
ring of inner nineteenth-century
boulevards - Strasbourg, Carnot,
Jules-Guesde and others. An outer
ring enclosing these is formed by
the Canal du Midi, which here joins
the Garonne on its way from the
Mediterranean to the Atlantic.
Old Toulouse is effectively
quartered by two nineteenth-century
streets: the long shopping street, rue
d'Alsace-Lorraine/rue du Languedoc
, which runs north-south; and rue
de Metz , which runs east-west
onto the Pont-Neuf and across the
Garonne. It is all very compact and
easily walkable.
In addition to the general
pleasure of wandering the streets,
there are three very good museums
and some real architectural
treasures in the churches of St-Sernin
and Les Jacobins and in the
magnificent Renaissance town houses
- hôtels particuliers - of
the merchants who grew rich on the
woad-dye trade. This formed the
basis of the city's economy from the
mid-fifteenth to the mid-sixteenth
century, when the arrival of indigo
from the Indian colonies wiped it
out.
Place du Capitole is the
centre of gravity for the city's
social life. Its smart cafés throng
with people at lunchtime and in the
early evening when the dying sun
flushes the pink facade of the big
town hall opposite. This is the
scene of a mammoth Wednesday market
for food, clothes and junk, and of a
smaller organic foods market on
Tuesday and Saturday mornings. From
place du Capitole, a labyrinth of
narrow medieval streets radiates out
to the town's several other squares,
such as place Wilson, the more
intimate place St-Georges, the
delightful triangular place de la
Trinité and place St-étienne in
front of the cathedral.
For green space, you have to head
for the sunny banks of the Garonne
or the lovely formal gardens of the Grand-Rond
and Jardin des Plantes in the
southeast corner of the centre. A
less obvious but attractive
alternative is the towpath of the
Canal du Midi; the best place to
join it is a short walk southeast of
the Jardin des Plantes, by the
neo-Moorish pavilion of the Georges-Labit
museum , which houses a good
collection of Egyptian and Oriental
art.
