SATURDAY
Morning
Snub the hotel breakfast. Slip out instead to a cafe terrace on the Place du Capitole, the sunlit acreage of central square. Coffee and a croissant here will save you €€€s. It also puts you in the swing of things: the morning city flows past, the town hall resembles the parliament building of a medium-sized nation and, as every day, France’s fourth city celebrates itself.
You need top-class rugby, planes or rockets? Toulouse is your place. It’s strong, too, on churches, waterways, art, cassoulet, sausages and music. Buildings come mainly in brick, which lends itself to liveliness as dressed stone does not. Southern vigour pulses through narrow streets that struggle to contain it. The city, a capital of conviviality for centuries, now contains as much as a normally constituted person can handle. An arrival from grimmer regions can be overwhelming — in a good way.
Leave the grand square via Rue du Taur, one of many tight brick thoroughfares as suitable for commerce, cafes and social intercourse now as they were 500 years ago. A decent dawdle leads to St Sernin Basilica , the most imposing Romanesque church in Christendom. It overawed medieval pilgrims. They’d then go inside, to be cowed all over again by a world-class collection of 200 relics, including bits of six apostles. (Only St Peter’s in Rome has more saintly body parts.)
Back towards the centre, the Jacobins’ Monastery was the Catholic church’s way of standing triumphant over the body of the Cathar heresy, rife in the region back then. It rammed home the message with gothic majesty. You need to see this place, as you need to see the Augustins’ Monastery, another monumental death-dance over heresy (it’s now an exceptional museum of fine art). Look out especially for the Cuban Jorge Pardo’s recent reworking of church column s: he’s put them on coloured colonnades like giant sticks of rock, hung coloured lights above and filled a chamber with them. The effect is at once serious, hallucinatory and joyful (£4; augustins.org ).
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Afternoon
Time for lunch. Head to the Victor Hugo Market . The 1970s building is ugly — think Preston bus station without the buses — but assembles all the abundance of the French southwest. Food lust is inevitable. Happily, a handful of market restaurants jam in on the first floor, with menus from about £14. Try Le Louchebem (00 33-5 61 12 12 52 ).
After, if there’s a rugby game on, you might join the crowd at the Ernest- Wallon Stadium . Rugby throbs through Toulouse as football does through Manchester or cricket through Antigua. If you’re an enthusiast, you’ll be in good company (tickets from £13; stadetoulousain.fr). If not, stroll. Rue d’Alsace Lorraine is the classic shopping stretch, but better yet are the compressed streets around Rue des Changes . They pitch you among grocers, coffee shops, perfumiers, bistros, wine shops, tattooists and bars, all jostling together in a lively sense of centuries. Toulouse doesn’t let up. There is a reason to walk down every little street.
Evening
No 5, the city’s sharpest little wine bar, on Rue de la Bourse, is popular with polite people in their thirties. Book a spot, preferably in the vaulted cellar, and choose from 2,300 wines (32 by the glass) via card-operated machines. Tapas (from £2.20) and sharing plates of charcuterie and cheese (from £5) flesh out the evening ( n5winebar.com). Alternatively, try Monsieur Georges, on the bouncy Place St Georges (menu £25; monsieurgeorges.fr ). Continue to Place St Pierre, by the River Garonne, where students, rugby fans and everyone in between ensure a boisterousness of bars such as Chez Tonton for pastis or
Le Bar Basque for beer.
SUNDAY
Morning
First, an amble along the broad, idle river, perhaps from the Pont Neuf . Every great city needs a defining riverside and this is Toulouse’s. Next, choose between rockets and planes. Toulouse is noted for both, thus it has the continent’s best space theme park and also a terrific aerospace museum, which opened last year. You can’t do both in a day, so I’d take the 37 bus out to the Cité de l’Espace , saving Aeroscopia for next time. Here is a real Soyuz space capsule, a genuine Mir space station, an Ariane 5 rocket — and that’s just on the lawn outside. Inside, a 2012 overhaul has provided so much interactivity and stuff to do that even the most resistant techno-dunderheads submit. Believe me. The Moon Runner reproduces the weightlessness of real moonwalking. You might have a crack at a TV weather forecast. Or launching your own space rocket. Or discover how GPS works (not by magic, as I’d previously assumed). Then there’s a planetarium, a gigantic Imax 3D screen and... Well, I can’t recommend this place highly enough. Break for lunch in the restaurant, where mains are about £10 (tickets from £16 ; cite-espace.com ).
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Afternoon
Back in town, for a counterblast of grace from earlier times, make for the formidable Hôtel d’Assézat . This huge and stunning townhouse was financed by the woad trade, the source of Toulouse’s 16th-century splendour. Who knew there was serious money in woad? Assézat is remarkable also for an art collection, from post-Renaissance to post-impressionist, put together by the Argentinian plutocrat Georges Bemberg. Among the highlights is an unexpected sequence of Bonnards (£6; fondation-bemberg.fr ).
Evening
To the J’Go, right by the Victor Hugo Market. It’s a landmark restaurant where good meat is attended by tie-loosening jollity (dinner menus from £17; lejgo.com ). Later, bob upstairs to the associated Pivolo bar and terrace where the range of gins and tonic is vast. A couple, and Toulouse will be Shangri-la.
Where to stay
Opened last September, La Cour des Consuls on Rue des Couteliers . It offers five-start comfort and was created, at noble expense and with modern wit, from a couple of 18th-century townhouses . The spa looks good; and the restaurant provided the finest meal I’ve recently had (dinner menu from £60; doubles from £140; mgallery.com). Otherwise, try Hôtel des Arts , equally central and very arty (doubles from £76; en.hoteldesartstoulouse.fr).
Getting there
Airlines flying to Toulouse include British Airways, easyJet and Jet2.