Toulouse is the center of the European aerospace industry with the headquarters of Airbus, the SPOT satellite system, ATR and Aerospace Valley.
It is home to the CNES Toulouse Space Center, which is the largest national space center in Europe, as well as, in the military sphere, the newly established NATO Space Center of Excellence and the French Space Command and Space Academy.
Thales Alenia Space, ATR, SAFRAN, Liebherr-Aerospace and Airbus Defense and Space also have a significant presence in Toulouse.
The Toulouse-Blagnac air route with Paris airports is the busiest in France, carrying 3.2 million passengers in 2019.
According to L'Express and Challenges rankings, Toulouse is the most dynamic French city.
Founded by the Romans, the city was the capital of the Visigothic Kingdom in the 5th century and the capital of the province of Languedoc during the late medieval and early modern periods, making it the unofficial capital of the cultural region of Occitania.
It is now the capital of the Occitanie region, the second largest metropolitan region of France.
The University of Toulouse is one of the oldest in Europe.
Toulouse is also home to prestigious higher education institutions, especially in the field of aerospace engineering.
Together with the university, they have transformed Toulouse into the fourth largest student city in France, with a university population of almost 140,000 students.