Toulouse has always been the gateway to Southern France. Swept by southerly winds, the city gives visitors a foretaste of the Mediterranean thanks to its geographical location, its climate and its culture. Toulouse is more than the "Pink City"; it was a centre of trade, a marketplace that was also "Palladian", a town attractive to artists, and "holy" for it had dozens of churches.
Brick has been the main feature of buildings in Toulouse for more than two thousand years as is obvious in all the historic monuments, from the St. Sernin's Basilica to the buildings of the Dominican monastery, from the museum housed in the former Augustinian monastery to the Cathedral Church of St. Stephen, from the central square flanked by the Capitole to the Hospice de la Grave, and from the Assézat mansion to the Fermat high school.