Beaumont de Lomagne & the Surrounding Area - L'Arbre d'Or Hotel, B+B, Chambres d'Hôtes in Beaumont de Lomagne, near Toulouse, south west France has 5 chambres / 5 double bedrooms

Beaumont de Lomagne, Toulouse & The Surrounding Area

BEAUMONT DE LOMAGNE is a perfect model of a royal bastide. Created in the 13th Century it is characterised by its geometric layout of streets radiating from its 14th century 'Halle'. The town has kept its 13th Century fortified church.

The birthplace of Pierre Fermat, his home contains an exhibition about the life and work of this amateur genius who baffled the world's scientists for over 250 years with his last theorem.

The Hippodrome of Bordevieille hosts many of the country's prestigious trotting races. The racecourse is next to the lake. The lake measures some 30 hectares and has a beach which available for swimming in the summer. Windsurfing, sailing, fishing and other activities are also available.

TO SEE : Pierre Fermat permanent exhibition and theme plays, pigeonniers, bell-tower, viewpoint of the Gimone valley from Fermat tower, the covered 'Halle'.

EVENTS : Fairytale festival in January, Fermat Fete in April, children's fete in May, garlic festival in July, beef festival in August, garlic show in September, Book Show in November, exhibitions, brocantes, gourmand markets.

TOULOUSE, with its beautiful historic centre, is one of the most vibrant and metropolitan provincial cities in France. This is a transformation that has come about since the war, under the guidance of the French state which has poured in money to make Toulouse the think-tank of high-tech industry and a sort of premier trans-national Euroville. Always an aviation centre...St-Exupéry and Mermoz flew out from here on their pioneering airmail flights over Africa and the Atlantic in the 1920s...Toulouse is now home to Aérospatiale, the driving force behind Concorde, Airbus and the Ariane space rocket. The national Space Centre, the European shuttle programme, the leading aeronautical schools, the frontier-pushing electronics industry...it's all happening in Toulouse, whose 110,000 students make it second only to Paris as a university centre. But it's not to the burgeoning suburbs of factories, labs, shopping and housing complexes that all these people go for their entertainment, but to the old Ville Rose...pink not only in its brickwork, but also in its politics.

This is not the first flush of pre-eminence for Toulouse. From the tenth to the thirteenth centuries the counts of Toulouse controlled much of southern France. They maintained the most resplendent court in the land, renowned especially for its troubadours, the poets of courtly love, whose work influenced Petrarch, Dante and Chaucer and thus the whole course of European poetry. Until, that is, the arrival of the hungry northern French nobles of the Albigensian Crusade; in 1271 Toulouse became crown property.