In France’s sunny ‘pink city’, ancient palaces show world-class art and crowds sip pastis and eat cassoulet and top-notch tapas at lively food markets
Ask French people where they would prefer to live and one answer that keeps coming up is Toulouse. Some 10,000 people settle here each year, drawn to the romantic ville rose, by the sunny southern climate and the lively bistros and bodegas serving delicious regional cuisine alongside tasty Spanish tapas. A Latin spirit pervades the city just 100km from the Spanish border, and the laid-back toulousains could not be more welcoming. Many of the distinctive red-brick palaces and mansions in the historic centre house world-class museums, and with a 100,000-strong student population, weekends turn into one long fiesta. Join them sipping a pastis apéro on the grassy banks of the fast-flowing Garonne river, or dancing salsa into the early hours.