Editing Toulouse (section)

==<FONT COLOR="#571B7e">Info more at its place at Wikivoyage</font>==
[[Image:ToulouseMap1631.jpg||left|350px|Map of Toulouse, year 1631]]
Toulouse is the great rival of Bordeaux for the "title" of being the capital of South-Western France. It is renowned for its gastronomy (try cassoulet, foie gras, confit...) and its brick walls that give the city a particular architecture and everchanging colours. It goes from orange to yellow to red or even pink - thus making it the "Pink City" indeed - as seasons or hours of the day go by.

Its history is rich and extends over thousands of years - the earliest inhabitants dating from prehistorical times, it also was for a short while the capital of the wisigoth empire and 'Tolosa' was a major city in the area under Roman times. Its chore still bears some marks of it - if you pay enough attention you might figure which were the two ancient Roman 'cardus' and 'decumanus' axis that organised the whole division of lands and street pattern (rue St Rome/rue des Filatiers and rue de Metz). Downtown, the chore of Toulouse offers a grid of crooked, tiny labyrinthical one-way streets with the sewage system right in the middle - typical from Middle Ages!

But the most glorious hours of the city were during the 16th - 17th century. This is when most of the major historical buildings date from. What made Toulouse so wealthy is a plant called 'pastel'. It was cultivated in the surroundings then treated so it would give out a particular blue colour used to dye clothes and much appreciated during Renaissance. Later on, India was discovered which lead to trading and using indigo - this being much cheaper than cultivating pastel Toulouse was left ruined, having lost its main source of income.

Nowadays the economy of the city is mostly about tertiary and white collar industry e.g. electronics, space and aeronautics. It hosts an important part of the main European aircraft factory Airbus inc. the assembly lines of the newest A380 and some of the major French space research centres - the Ariane sky-rocket is launched and controlled from both Toulouse and Kourou in French Guyana (South America).

It is also one of the major cities for students in France - it claims to host the most after Paris with an average population of 120 000 students. This 'title' is disputed though by Grenoble (South-East of France, close to the Alps) that is well known as another 'academic' city.