[lwptoc]
Toulouse is the capital of the Haute-Garonne department in southern France, as well as the Occitanie region. It is located on the banks of the Garonne River, 150 kilometers (93 miles) from the Mediterranean Sea, 230 kilometers (143 miles) from the Atlantic Ocean, and 680 kilometers (420 miles) from Paris. With a population of almost 450,000 people, it is France’s fourth-largest city. Furthermore, according to the January 2011 census, the Toulouse metropolitan region has 1,250,251 residents, making it the fourth-largest in France, behind only Paris (12.3 million), Lyon (2.2 million), and Marseille (1.7 million).
Toulouse is the European aerospace industry’s nerve center, home to Airbus, the Galileo positioning system, the SPOT satellite system, the Airbus Group (previously EADS), ATR, and the Aerospace Valley.
The city is also home to Intel’s European headquarters and CNES’s Toulouse Space Centre (CST), Europe’s biggest space center. Thales Alenia Space and Astrium Satellites, the satellite system division of Airbus Group, also have a large presence in Toulouse. Its world-renowned university is one of Europe’s oldest (established in 1229) and has more than 103,000 students, making it France’s fourth-largest university campus after Paris, Lyon, and Lille.
The flight route between Toulouse Blagnac and Paris Orly is Europe’s busiest, with 2.4 million passengers transported in 2014. Toulouse is the most dynamic French city, according to L’Express and Challenges rankings.
The city was the capital of the Visigothic Kingdom in the 5th century and the seat of the province of Languedoc in the late Middle Ages and early modern era (provinces were dissolved after the French Revolution), making it the unofficial capital of Occitania (Southern France). It is currently the capital of the Midi-Pyrénées region, France’s biggest metropolitan area.
Toulouse has two UNESCO World Heritage sites, the Canal du Midi (designated in 1996 and shared with other cities) and the Basilica of St. Sernin, Europe’s largest remaining Romanesque building, designated in 1998 due to its importance to the Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage route.