Toulouse at night

The Pont-Neuf and Hotel Dieu

4 Oct 2014 | From Adeline of France

OFFICIAL POSTCROSSING

Toulouse is the capital city of the department of Haute-Garonne, and of the region Midi-Pyrénées, in southwestern France. A city with unique architecture made of pinkish terracotta bricks, which earned it the nickname la Ville Rose ("the Pink City").

The Pont Neuf is the oldest standing bridge across the river Seine in Paris, France. Its name, which was given to distinguish it from older bridges that were lined on both sides with houses, has remained. It stands by the western point of the Île de la Cité, the island in the middle of the river that was the heart of medieval Paris.

The Hôtel-Dieu Saint-Jacques is a former hospital in Toulouse. Already operating from the twelfth century on the left bank of the Garonne, it became the largest Toulouse hospital after numerous expansions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The building is registered and declared a historic monument in 1986 and 1988, and the last patients left the building in 1987. It now houses the administrative center of the University Hospital of Toulouse, the European Institute of Telemedicine, and a museum of the history of medicine.