Toulouse is a city in the Haute-Garonne department in southwestern France. It lies on the banks of the River Garonne, 590 km (366 mi) away from Paris and half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. With 1,102,882 inhabitants as of 1 January 2006, the Toulouse metropolitan area is the fifth-largest in France, after Paris (11.8 million), Lyon (1.8 million), Marseille (1.7 million) and Lille (1.16 million).
Toulouse is one of the bases of the European aerospace industry, with the headquarters of Airbus, Galileo positioning system, the SPOT satellite system, and CNES's Toulouse Space Centre (CST), the largest space centre in Europe. Thales Alenia Space, Europe's largest satellite manufacturer, and Astrium Satellites, EADS's satellite system subsidiary, also have a significant presence in Toulouse. Its world renowned university is one of the oldest in Europe (founded in 1229) and, with more than 97,000 students, is with Lille the third-largest university campus of France after Paris and Lyon.© This article about tourism in Toulouse is provided by a external resource
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