Toulouse

City hall and the opera house share one red-brick facade along a whole side of the square. An Occitan cross is set in bronze into the paving. Upstairs, entry to the Salle des Illustres and its painted ceilings is free whenever no council is sitting.

A Romanesque church in mixed brick and stone, listed by UNESCO as part of the Santiago pilgrim routes. Its octagonal bell tower narrows with every tier. On Sunday morning a flea market rings the church and blocks the streets around it.

Seven columns in a single row hold up the vault, and from the last one twenty-two ribs fan out in what everyone calls the palm tree. The remains of Thomas Aquinas lie beneath the altar. Entry to the church is free, while the cloister needs a ticket.

A full-size Ariane 5 mock-up stands outside, and you can walk through a replica of the Mir space station. Planetarium and film sessions start at fixed hours, so look at the day's timetable first thing on arrival. It takes up most of a day.

An aviation museum beside Blagnac airport where you walk through two Concordes and an A380 fuselage. Airbus assembly-line tours are separate and need booking well ahead with ID details; walk-ups on the day are turned away.

Its name means new bridge, yet it is the oldest bridge still crossing the river in Toulouse, with round openings in each pier to let floodwater through. At sunset students sit on the Daurade quay steps below and watch the dome opposite change colour.

A 17th-century canal joining the Mediterranean to rivers that run to the Atlantic, now on the UNESCO list. Plane trees once shaded the towpath; a fungal blight forced the felling of large numbers and replanting with other species, so shade varies along it.

A Renaissance mansion built in the 16th century by Pierre d'Assezat, rich from woad, the blue dye locals call pastel. It recalls the years when the dye trade made Toulouse wealthy. Nobody takes a ticket at the courtyard, so its carved columns cost you nothing.

A modern art museum in the brick halls of the old slaughterhouse. It owns a huge stage curtain painted by Picasso, which is so fragile that it hangs for only part of the year. Check the exhibition calendar before going if the curtain is the reason.

A giant Minotaur of wood and steel walks the old runway with people riding on its back. The runway at Montaudran is where airmail planes once took off, so a memorial to the mail pilots sits next door. Minotaur rides run in set slots and sell out early.

Saint-Etienne's nave and choir were built centuries apart and never lined up, so the two halves meet off-axis. Step inside and the far end seems to bend away, puzzling first-timers. Even the rose window on the front sits off-centre above the door.

A covered market under a concrete car park, packed with stalls of Toulouse sausage, duck and cheese. Upstairs a row of small restaurants cooks lunch from what is sold below. Seats go fast at lunchtime, so head up before twelve noon.

Laid out in 1981 in the Compans-Caffarelli park, with a pond, a red bridge and a tea house. Free and central, it makes a good pause between sights. It looks neatest in the morning, once gardeners have freshly raked the gravel.

The archaeology museum right beside Saint-Sernin, where marble busts of emperors and gods from the Roman villa of Chiragan stand in rows in one room. The basement exposes an old burial ground. Paired with Saint-Sernin, an hour covers both.

A red-brick town an hour from Toulouse by train; its fortress-like Sainte-Cecile is reckoned the biggest cathedral anywhere built of brick. The Berbie palace beside it holds the work of local son Toulouse-Lautrec. UNESCO listed the bishops' city in 2010.