Toulouse (French, locally:; Occitan: Tolosa, Latin: Tolosa, medieval Tholoza) is a city in the Haute-Garonne department in southwestern France. It lies on the banks of the River Garonne, 150 kilometers from the Mediterranean Sea and 300 from the Atlantic Ocean, and 590 km (366 mi) away from Paris. With 704,395 inhabitants, Toulouse Métropole, the Greater Toulouse is the 6th largest urban area in France after Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Lille and Bordeaux. With 1,202,889 inhabitants as of 1 January 2008, the Toulouse metropolitan area is the fourth-largest in France, after Paris (12.1 million), Lyon (2.1 million), and Marseille (1.7 million).
Toulouse is the centre of the European aerospace industry, with the headquarters of Airbus, Galileo positioning system, the SPOT satellite system, ATR (aircraft manufacturer), the Aerospace Valley, considered as a global cluster, the c