Toulouse

Toulouse stands on the Garonne, its brick buildings giving the city its distinctive colour. Once the seat of powerful counts, it became part of the French royal domain in 1271. The city was governed by magistrates known as capitouls and grew into a centre of law, commerce and learning for the south of France.

In 1443 the Parlement of Toulouse was permanently established to administer justice closer to the southern provinces than Paris. Twenty years later a great fire devastated much of the city. Toulouse recovered, and in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the trade in woad and fine cloth brought considerable wealth. Merchants, magistrates and capitouls built splendid town houses such as the Hôtel d'Assézat, monuments to their prosperity and influence.