Adoringly dubbed La Ville Rose for its pink terracotta architecture, Toulouse moves with a spellbinding mix of beauty and brains. Its business ecosystem oozes authority: Airbus, Thales Alenia Space, CNES (the national space agency of France), and dozens of other cutting-edge firms employ almost 100,000 in this well-connected hub for rocket science. Now, it’s anticipating an auspicious newcomer: a currently unnamed alliance of Airbus, Thales, and Italy’s Leonardo. The three plan to merge their space divisions to strengthen European aerospace, block Elon Musk’s Starlink, and generate billions in revenue – all from a headquarters in Toulouse.
Visitors should keep an eye to the sky, then turn back to the beauty around them, lest they miss a thing. Toulouse is quirky, bikeable (#9), and a UNESCO Creative City of Music, an honour that would fill the city’s fabled medieval troubadours with pride were they here to see it. It also knows how to eat, its #43-ranked restaurants offering classic fare and contemporary cuisine alike, Michelin stars accounted for. With new high-speed rail bringing Paris within three hours by 2032, and the inter-city Metro Line C planned for 2028, expect to hear even more from this ascendant French wonder.