The Glory of Occitania: A Toulouse Walking Tour

Toulouse wears its Roman heritage in brick, from Gothic churches to Renaissance palaces built on fortunes made elsewhere. On this walking tour, you'll see how the city borrowed Roman building techniques to create a distinct architectural identity. You'll also find out why locals still call their city hall the Capitolium.

The tour starts at Capitole Square metro station, beside a Renaissance clock tower that once held the city's official archives. From there, you'll pass through Belle Époque shopping streets modeled on Haussmann's Paris before entering the medieval quarter along Rue de Taur, the city's oldest thoroughfare. You'll walk in the footsteps of pilgrims heading to the Basilica of Saint Sernin, France's largest Romanesque church, built to shelter the remains of Toulouse's first Christian martyr.

Inside Saint Sernin, you'll see 1100s frescoes and a Baroque baldequin covering the saint's sarcophagus. Further on, you'll enter the Jacobins church, birthplace of the Dominican order, where a single palm-shaped column soars twenty-two meters to support the vaulted ceiling. The tour ends at the Hôtel d'Assézat, a Renaissance palace funded by the woad dye trade that once made its owner one of the city's richest men.

On this 120-minute tour, you'll have a chance to:

• Spot a rare 24-hour clock from 1895, built by a bank to broadcast the time before personal watches were common
• Step into the Art Deco Bibliothèque du Périgord, its facade carved with a 96-metre frieze depicting human history
• Peek inside the Chapelle des Carmelites, Toulouse's only wood-latticed chapel, painted floor to ceiling in Baroque style
• Find the city's oldest house, a half-timbered merchant's home from the early 1500s hiding on Rue de Taur
• Compare bilingual street signs in French and Occitan, a nod to the region's medieval Troubadour language
• Stand on the Pont Neuf, the only Toulouse bridge never destroyed by flooding in over 400 years
• Overlook the Garonne River at Place de la Daurade, where Romans built their first port in 50 BC

By the time you reach the Hôtel d'Assézat, you'll understand exactly how Toulouse turned brick, ambition, and Roman memory into its own architectural signature.