Toulouse: the pink city of aerospace

On Place du Capitole, the 18th-century facade of the Capitole houses both the town hall and the city opera theatre behind the same walls.

A few steps away, the Basilica of Saint-Sernin, the largest surviving Romanesque church in Europe, was a historical stop along the Way of Saint James to Compostela.

Walking among the streets of the centre, the pink bricks that give the city its nickname cover almost every historic facade of the medieval centre, glowing with warm reflections at sunset.

For those with more time, the City of Space, a science park dedicated to aerospace, displays replicas of rockets at full scale in the city outskirts, together with modules of the international space station.

The rosy color of Toulouse's bricks comes from local clay, the only material readily available in the surrounding plain, which lacked easily accessible stone quarries in medieval times.

The presence of Airbus, with its factories and research centers just outside the city, has made Toulouse one of the few places on Earth where you can watch large commercial aircraft being assembled.